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WITHDRAWN FROM U. OF P. LIBRARY — 








A SHORT HISTORY 


OF THE 


RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 


TAKEN FROM THE WORK OF 


JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
BY 


LIEUT.-COLONEL ALFRED PEARSON 





NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 








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PREFACE. 





It had been often represented to my husband that 
his ‘‘ Renaissance in Italy” in a shorter form would 
be acceptable io many who are without the leisure or the 
inclination to take up the subject in the character of 
students. But though, through siress of other work, 
he was indisposed to return to the subject, he was quite 
willing that our friend Colonel Pearson, who has been 
associated with us for some years at Davos, and who ts 
well acquainted with Italy, should carry out his own 
wews as to what might be interesting and useful to 
those who would be satisfied with the subject in a more 
popular form. Ii will be seen, therefore, that in the 
choice of his materials Colonel Pearson’s object has 
been fo select and arrange for those who know Italy, 
or hope in the future to do so, whatever may sustain or 
promote an inierest in its history, its art, and its 
literature. With regard éo the success with which this 
may have been done, it was my husband's thought to 


WITHDRAWN FROM U. OF P. LIBRARY 


ace 


vi PREFACE. 


record here the opinion he frequently expressed—that 
the intention of his large work had been thoroughly 
appreciated by Colonel Pearson, and ws essence repro- 
duced without any important omission. To have seen 
this reflection of it, in a form which he agreed might 
attract a larger public than he had appealed to, was, tt 
may be well to add, a source of great pleasure to him 


during the last winter of his life. 
J. G SYMONDS. 


AM HOF, DAVOS PLATZ: 
August 11, 1893. 


CONTENTS 





I. THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE .« « 
Il. Tue Risk or tHE Communes, . . . 
III. Tue Rute or tHE Despots. . . . 
IV. Tue Porrs of THE RENAISSANCE . . , 
V. SavonaROLA: ScouRGE AND SEER... 
VI. Tue Rar or Cuartes VIIL . . 
VII. Tue Revivat or LEARNING. .. . 
VIII. Tue Firorentine Historians . 
IX. Literary Society aT FLORENCE. . . 
X. Men or Lerrers aT Rome anp Nappies . 
XI. Miran, Mantua, AND FERRARA. 
Deer STP Ine ARTS, 06 ef oe fe 
XIII. Tue Revivat or VERNACULAR LITERATURE 


XIV. Tue Catuotic REACTION. . 2. 2. © 


SN Se eee ee ee ec ee ae 





A SHORT HISTORY 


OF THE 


RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 


I. 
THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE, 


eee word Renaissance has of late years received a 
more extended significance than that which is im- 
plied in our English equivalent—the Revival of Learn- 
ing. We use it to denote the whole transition from the 
Middle Ages to the Modern World; and though it is 
possible to assign certain limits to the period during 
which this transition took place, we cannot fix on any 
dates so positively as to say—between this year and 
that the movement was accomplished. 

In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena 
of the Renaissance to any one Cause or Cir- Various 
cumstance, or limit them within the field Er 
of any one department of human knowledge. naissance. 
If we ask the students of art what they mean by the 
Renaissance, they will reply that it was the revolution 
effected in architecture, painting, and sculpture by the 
recovery of antique monuments. Students of literature, 
philosophy, and theology see in the Renaissance that 


2 THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


discovery of manuscripts, that passion for antiquity, 
that progress in philology and criticism which led to a 
correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in 
poetry, to new systems of thought, to more accurate 
analysis, and, finally, to the Lutheran schism and the 
emancipation of the conscience. Men of science will 
discourse about the discovery of the solar system by 
Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and 
Harvey’s theory of the circulation of the blood. The 
origination of a truly scientific method is the point 
which interests them most in the Renaissance. The 
political historian, again, has his own answer to the 
question. The extinction of feudalism, the develop- 
ment of the great nationalities of Europe, the growth of 
monarchy, the limitation of ecclesiastical authority and 
the erection of the Papacy into an Italian kingdom, and, 
in the last place, the gradual emergence of that sense of 
popular freedom which exploded in the Revolution: 
these are the aspects of the movement which engross 
his attention. Jurists will describe the dissolution of 
legal fictions based upon the false decretals, the acqui- 
sition of a true text of the Roman Code, and the attempt 
to introduce a rational method into the theory of mod- 
ern jurisprudence, as well as to commence the study of 
international law. Men whose attention has been 
turned to the history of discoveries and inventions will 
relate the exploration of America and the East, or will 
point to the benefits conferred upon the world by the 
arts of printing and engraving, by the compass and the 
telescope, by paper and by gunpowder ; and will insist 
that at the moment of the Renaissance all these in- 
stances of mechanical utility started into existence to 
aid the dissolution of what was rotten and must perish, 


LHE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 3 


to strengthen and perpetuate the new and useful and 
life-giving. 

Yet neither any one of these answers taken separately, 
nor, indeed, all of them together, will offer a It wasa 
solution of the problem. By the term. Re- faa e 
naissance, or new birth, is indicated a natural move- 
ment, not to be explained by this or that characteristic, 
but to be accepted as an effort of humanity for which 
at length the time had come, and in the onward prog- 
ress of which we still participate. The history of the 
Renaissance is not the history of arts, or of sciences, or 
of literature, or even of nations. It is the history of the 
attainment of self-conscious freedom to the human 
spirit manifested in the European races, It is no mere 
political mutation, no new fashion of art, no restoration 
of classical standards of taste. The arts and the inven- 
tions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly 
became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long 
lain neglected on the shores of the Dead Sea, which we 
call the Middle Ages. It was not their discovery which 
caused the Renaissance; but it was the intellectual 
energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which 
enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. 
The force then generated still continues, vital and 
expansive, in the spirit of the modern world. 

How was it, then, that at a certain period, about four- 
teen centuries after Christ, to speak roughly, Certain 
the intellect of the Western races awoke aa 
as it were from slumber and began once required 
more to be active? That is a question for it. 
which we can but imperfectly answer. But a glance at 
the history of the preceding centuries shows that, after 
the dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, 


4 THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


there was no immediate possibility of any intellectual 
revival, The barbarous races which had deluged Europe 
had to absorb their barbarism ; the fragments of Roman 
civilization had either to be destroyed or assimilated; 
the Germanic nations had to receive culture and religion 
from the people they had superseded ; the Church had 
to be created, and a new form given to the old idea of 
the Empire. It was further necessary that the modern 
nationalities should be defined, that the modern lan- 
guages should be formed, that peace should be secured 
to some extent and wealth accumulated, before the 
indispensable conditions for a resurrection of the free 
spirit of humanity could exist. The first nation which 
fulfilled these conditions was the first to inaugurate the 
new era. The reason why Italy took the lead in the 
Renaissance was that Italy possessed a language, a 
favorable climate, political freedom, and commercial 
prosperity, at a time when other nations were still 
semi-barbarous. 

At the same time it must not be supposed that the 
There were @aissance burst suddenly upon the world 
signs of in the fifteenth century without premonitory 
its advent. symptoms. Within the middle age, over 
and over again, the reason strove to break loose from 
its fetters. The ideas projected thus early were imma- 
ture and abortive, and the nations were not ready for 
them. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for vent- 
uring to examine what God had meant to keep secret ; 
Dominicans preaching crusades against the cultivated 
nobles of Toulouse; Popes stamping out the seed of 
enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the mas 
terpieces of classical literature to make way for their 
litanies, or selling pieces of parchment for charms; a 


THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 5 


jaity given up to superstition ; a clergy sunk in sensual 
sloth, or fevered with demoniac zeal: these still ruled 
the intellectual condition of Europe. It was, therefore, 
only at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when 
Italy had lost indeed the heroic spirit which we admire 
in her Communes of the thirteenth, but had gained 
instead ease, wealth, magnificence, and that repose 
which springs from long prosperity, that the new age at 
last began. 

During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in 
a cowl. He had not seen the beauty of ee 
the world, or had seen it only to cross him- o6¢ lige in 
self and turn aside, to tell his beads and the Middle 
pray. Like St. Bernard travelling along sak 
the shores of Lake Leman, and noticing neither the 
azure of the waters, nor the luxuriance of the vines, 
nor the radiance of the mountains with their robe of sun 
and snow, but bending a thought-burdened forehead 
over the neck of his mule; even like this monk, hu- 
manity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the ter- 
rors of sin, death, and judgment, along the highways 
of the world, and had scarcely known that they were 
sightworthy, or that life is a blessing. Beauty is a 
snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man 
fallen and lost, death the only certainty; ignorance is 
acceptable to God as a proof of faith and submission; 
abstinence and mortification are the only safe rules of 
life : these were the fixed ideas of the ascetic medieval 
Church. The Renaissance questioned and shattered 
them, rending the thick veil which they had drawn be- 
tween the mind of man and the outer world, and flash- 
ing the light of reason upon the darkened places of his 
own nature. For the mystic teaching of the Church 


6 THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


was substituted culture in the classical humanities; 
a new ideal was established, whereby man strove ta 
make himself the monarch of the globe on which it is 
his privilege as well as destiny to live. The Renais- 
sance was the liberation of the reason from a dungeon, 
the double discovery of the outer and the inner world. 

An external event determined the direction which 
Theawaken- this outburst of the spirit of freedom should 
ing toa take. This was the contact of the modern 
new ideal, = With the ancient mind, which followed upon 
what is called the Revival of Learning. The fall of 
the Greek Empire in 1453, while it signalized the ex- 
tinction of the old order, gave an impulse to the now 
accumulated forces of the new. A belief in the identity 
of the human spirit under all previous manifestations, 
and in its uninterrupted continuity, was generated. 
Men found that in classical as well as Biblical antiquity 
existed an ideal of human life, both moral and intel- 
lectual, by which they might profit in the present. The 
modern genius felt confidence in its own energies when 
it learned what the ancients had achieved. The 
guesses of the ancients stimulated the exertions of the 
moderns. The whole world’s history seemed once 
more to be one. 

During the Middle Ages, again, the plastic arts, like 


A tresh philosophy, had degenerated into barren 
inspiration and meaningless scholasticism—a frigid 
in art. reproduction of lifeless forms copied tech- 


nically and without inspiration from debased patterns. 
Pictures became symbolically connected with the relig- 
ious feelings of the people, formule from which to 
deviate would be impious in the artist, and confusing 
to the worshipper. Superstitious reverence bound the 


THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. q 


painter to copy the almond-shaped eyes and stiff joints 
of the saints whom he had adored from infancy; and, 
even if it had been otherwise, he lacked the skill to 
imitate the natural forms he saw around him. But 
with the dawning of the Renaissance a new spirit in 
the arts arose. Men began to conceive that the human 
body is noble in itself and worthy of patient study. 
The object of the artist then became to unite devo- 
tional feeling and respect for the sacred legend with 
the utmost beauty, and the utmost fidelity of delinea- 
tion. In a word, he humanized the altar-pieces and 
the cloister frescoes upon which he worked. Finally, 
when the classics came to aid this work of progress, a 
new world of thought and fancy was revealed to their 
astonished eyes. 

It was scholarship, first and last, which revealed to 
men the wealth of their own minds, the pe en. 
dignity of human thought, the value of thusiasm 
human speculation, the importance of pepeepiant 
human life regarded as a thing apart from edge. 
religious rules and dogmas. During the Middle Ages 
a few students had possessed the poems of Virgil and 
the prose of Boethius, together with fragments of 
Lucan, Ovid, Statius, Juvenal, Cicero, and Horace. 
The Renaissance opened to the whole reading public 
the treasure-houses of Greek and Latin literature. At 
the same time the Bible in its original tongues was re- 
discovered. Mines of Oriental learning were laid bare 
for the students of the Jewish and Arabic traditions. 
The Aryan and Semitic revelations were for the first 
time subjected to something like a critical comparison. 
It was an age of accumulation, of uncritical and 
indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were wor- 


8 THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


shipped as reliques from the Holy Land had been 
worshipped a few generations before. What is most 
remarkable about this age of scholarship is the en- 
thusiasm which pervaded all classes. Popes and 
princes, captains of adventure and peasants, noble 
ladies and the leaders of the demi-monde, alike be- 
came scholars. 

There is a story told by Infessura which illustrates 
The the temper of the times with singular felic- 
legendof ity. On April 18, 1485, a report circulated 
hoes in Rome that some Lombard workmen had 
discovered a Roman sarcophagus while digging on the 
Appian Way. It was a marble tomb, with the inscrip- 
tion “Julia, daughter of Claudius ;” and inside lay the 
body of a beautiful girl of fifteen years, preserved by 
precious unguents from corruption. The bloom of 
youth was still upon her cheeks and lips; her eyes and 
mouth were half open; her long hair floated round her 
shoulders. She was instantly removed—so goes the 
legend—to the Capitol; and then pilgrims from all the 
quarters of Rome flocked to gaze upon this saint of the 
old Pagan world. In the eyes of these enthusiastic 

worshippers, her beauty was beyond imagination or 
description ; she was far fairer than any woman of the 
modern age could hope to be. At last Innocent VIII. 
feared lest the orthodox faith would suffer by this new 
cult of a heathen corpse, and Julia was buried secretly 
and at night by his directions. This tale is repeated 
in Matarazzo and in Nantiporto with slight variation ; 
in one the girl’s hair is said to have been yellow, in the 
other glossy black. What foundation there may be for 
the legend is beyond our inquiry; but there is a 
curious document on the subject in a Latin letter, 


THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 9 


which has not been published, from Bartholomzus Fon- 
tius to his friend Franciscus Saxethus, minutely de- 
scribing the corpse, as if he had not only seen but had 
handled it. We may at least use the mythus as a par- 
able of the ecstatic devotion which prompted the men 
of that age to discover a form of unimaginable beauty 
in a tomb of the classic world. 

Then came the age of the critics, philologers, and 
painters. They began their task by digest- The diffi- 
ing and arranging the contents of the “oyna: 
libraries. There were then no short cuts gome, 
to learning, no comprehensive lexicons, no dictionaries 
of antiquities, no carefully prepared thesauri of my- 
thology and history. Each student had to hold in his 
brain the whole mass of classical erudition. The text 
and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the tra- 
gedians had to be decided. Florence, Venice, Basle, 
Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing presses. The 
Aldi, the Stephani, and Froben toiled by night and day, 
employing scores of scholars, men of supreme devotion 
and of mighty brain, whose work it was to ascertain 
the right reading of sentences, to accentuate, to punct- 
uate, to commit to the press, and to place beyond the 
reach of monkish hatred or of envious time that ever- 
lasting solace of humanity which exists in the classics. 
All subsequent achievements in the field of scholarship 
sink into insignificance beside the labors of these men 
who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of 
Europe for the accomplishment of their titanic task. 
Virgil was printed in 1470, Homer in 1488, Aristotle in 
1498, Plato in 1513. They then became the inalien- 
able heritage of mankind. 


10 THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE, 


Not only did scholarship restore the classics and 
encourage literary criticism; it also en- 
couraged theological criticism. In the 
wake of theological freedom followed a free 
philosophy, no longer subject to the dogmas of the 
Church. To purge the Christian faith from false con- 
ceptions and to interpret religion to the reason has 
been the work of succeeding centuries. The whole 
movement of the Reformation is equally a phase in 
that accelerated action of the modern mind which at 
its commencement we call the Renaissance. It isa 
mistake to regard the Reformation as an isolated phe- 
nomenon, or as an effort to restore the Church to 
purity. It exhibits in the region of religious thought 
and national politics what the Renaissance displays in 
the sphere of culture, art, and science—the recovered 
energy and freedom of the reason. In this awakening 
it was not without its medizeval anticipations and fore- 
shadowings. ‘The heretics whom the Church success- 
fully combated in North Italy, France, and Bohemia 
were the precursors of Luther. The scholars prepared 
the way in the fifteenth century. Teachers of He- 
brew, founders of Hebrew type—Reuchlin in Ger- 
many, Alexander in Paris, Von Hutten as a pam- 
phleteer, and Erasmus as a humanist—contribute 
each a definite momentum. Luther, for his part, 
incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical au- 
thority, urges the necessity of a return to the essential 
truth of Christianity as distinguished from the idols 
of the Church, and asserts the right of the indi- 
vidual to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct 
opinion for himself. The veil which the Church 
had interposed between the human soul and God 


Its effect 
on theology. 


THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. It 


was broken down. The freedom of the conscience 
was established. 

It remains only to speak of the mechanical inven- 
tions which aided the emancipation of the m, impe- 
_ spirit in the modern age. Discovered over tus it gave 
and over again, and offered at intervals ‘ Sc1ence 
to the human race at various times and on divers soils, 
no effective use was made of these material resources 
until the fifteenth century. The compass, discovered 
according to tradition by Gioja of Naples in 1302, 
was employed by Columbus for the voyage to America 
in 1492. The telescope, known to the Arabians inthe 
Middle Ages, and described by Roger Bacon in 
1250, helped Copernicus to prove the revolution of the 
earth in 1530, and Galileo to substantiate his theory of 
the planetary system. Printing, after numerous useless 
revelations to the world of its resources, became 
an art in 1438; and paper, which had long been 
known to the Chinese, was first made of cotton in 
Europe about 1000, and of rags in 1319. Gunpowder 
entered into use about 1320, and in no long time 
revolutionized the art of war. The feudal castle, 
the armor of the knight and his battle-horse, the 
prowess of one man against a hundred, and the 
pride of the aristocratic cavalry trampling upon ill- 
armed militia, lost their superiority with the in- 
vention of cannon. Such reflections as these, how- 
ever, are trite, and must occur to every mind. It 
is more to the purpose to say that not these inventions, 
but the intelligence that used them, the conscious cal- 
culating spirit of the modern world, should rivet our 
attention when we direct it to the phenomena of the 
Renaissance, 


"2 THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


In the work of the Renaissance all the great nations 
The credit Of Europe shared. But it must never be 
attributable forgotten that, as a matter of history, the 
eh nn true Renaissance began in Italy. It was 
there that the essential qualities which distinguish the 
modern from the ancient and the medizval world 
were developed. Italy created that new spiritual at- 
mosphere of culture and of intellectual freedom which 
has been the life-breath of the European races. As 
the Jews are called the chosen and peculiar people 
of Divine revelation, so may the Italians be called 
the chosen and peculiar vessels of the prophecy of 
the Renaissance. In art, in scholarship, in science, 
in the mediation between antique culture and the 
modern intellect, they took the lead, handing to Ger- 
many and France and England the restored humanities 
complete. Spain and England have since done more 
for the exploration and colonization of the world. 
Germany achieved the labor of the Reformation almost 
single-handed. France has collected, centralized, and 
diffused intelligence with irresistible energy. But, if 
we return to the first origins of the Renaissance, we 
find that, at a time when the rest of Europe was inert, 
Italy had already begun to organize the various 
elements of the modern spirit, and to set the fashion 
whereby the other great nations should learn and live. 


if. 
THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


oo paige Italian history may be said to begin with 

the retirement of Honorius to Ravenna, and the 
subsequent foundation of Odoacer’s kingdom in 476. 
The Western Empire ended, and Rome was again 
recognized as a republic. When the Greek Emperor 
Zeno sent the Goths into Italy, Theodoric established 
himself at Ravenna, continued the institutions and 
usages of the ancient Empire, and sought to naturalize 
his alien authority. Rome he respected as the 
sacred city of ancient culture and civility. Her Con- 
suls, appointed by the Senate, were confirmed in due 
course by the Greek Emperor; and Theodoric made 
himself the vicegerent of the Czesars rather than an 
independent sovereign. When we criticise the Ostro- 
Gothic occupation by the light of subsequent history, 
it is clear that this exclusion of the capital from Theo- 
doric’s conquest and his veneration for the Eternal 
City were fatal to the unity of the Italian realm. 
From the moment that Rome was separated from the 
authority of the Italian kings there existed two powers 
in the Peninsula—the one secular, monarchical, with 
the military strength of the barbarians imposed upon 
its ancient municipal organization; the other ecclesi- 
astical, pontifical, relying on the undefined ambition of 


14 THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


S. Peter’s See and the unconquered instincts of the 
Roman people scattered through the still surviving 
cities. 

Justinian, bent upon asserting his rights as the suc 
Thelom- cessor of the Casars, wrested Italy from 
bard con- the hands of the Goths; but scarcely was 
a this revolution effected when Narses, the 
successor of Belisarius, called a new nation of bar- 
barians to support his policy in Italy. Narses died 
before the advent of the Lombards ; but they descended 
in forces far more formidable than the Goths, and es- 
tablished a second kingdom at Pavia. 

Under the Lombard domination Rome was again 
Its disinte- left untouched. Venice, with her popula- 
grating tion gathered fromthe ruins of the neigh- 
oeth boring Roman cities, remained in quasi- 
subjection to the Empire of the East ; Ravenna became 
a Greek garrison, ruling the Exarchate and Pentapolis 
under the name of the Byzantine Emperors. The 
Western coast escaped the Lombard domination ; for 
Genoa grew slowly into power upon her narrow cornice 
_ between hills and sea, while Pisa defied the barbarians 
intrenched in military stations at Fiesole and Lucca. 
In like manner the islands, Sicily, Sardinia, and Cor- 
sica, were detached from the Lombard kingdom; and 
the maritime cities of Southern Italy, Bari, Naples, 
Amalfi, and Gaeta, asserted independence under the 
shadow of the Greek ascendency. What the Lom- 
bards achieved in their conquest, and what they failed 
to accomplish, decided the future of Italy. They 
broke the country up into unequal blocks; for while 
the inland regions of the north obeyed Pavia, while 
the great duchies of Spoleto in the centre and of Bene-. 


THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 15 


vento in the south owned the nominal sway of Alboin’s 
successors, Venice and the Riviera, Pisa and the mari- 
time republics of Apulia and Calabria, Ravenna and 
the islands, repelled their sovereignty. Rome re- 
mained inviolable beneath the egis of her ancient 
prestige; and the decadent Empire of the East was 
too inert to check the freedom of the towns which 
recognized its titular supremacy. 

Not long after their settlement the princes of the 
Lombard race took the fatal step of join- p, 
ing the Catholic communion, whereby they calls for 
strengthened the hands of Rome and ex- ot ices 
cluded themselves from tyrannizing in the Charles 
last resort over the growing independence thé Great. 
of the Papal See. The causes of their conversion 
from Arianism to orthodox Latin Christianity are 
buried in obscurity ; but it is probable that they were 
driven to this measure by the rebelliousness of their 
great vassals and the necessity of resting for support 
upon the indigenous populations they had subjugated. 
Rome, profiting by the errors and the weakness of her 
antagonists, extended her spiritual dominion by en- 
forcing sacraments, ordeals, and appeals to ecclesiasti- 
cal tribunals, organized her hierarchy under Gregory 
the Great, and lost no opportunity of enriching and 
aggrandizing her bishoprics. In 718 she shook off the 
yoke of Byzantium by repelling the heresies of Leo 
the Isaurian; and when this insurrection menaced her 
with the domestic tyranny of the Lombard kings, who 
possessed themselves of Ravenna in 728, she called 
the Franks to her aid against the now powerful realm. 
Stephen II. journeyed in 753 to Gaul, named Pippin 
Patrician of Rome, and invited him to the conquest of 


16 LTHE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


Italy. In the war that followed the Franks subdued 
the Lombards, and Charles the Great was invested with 
their kingdom, and crowned Emperor in 800 by Leo 
III. at Rome. 

The famous compact between Charles the Great and 
The compact the Pope was in effect a ratification of 
between the existing state of things. The new 
Charles the . ° 
Greatand /mperor took for himself and converted into 
the Pope. a Frankish kingdom all the provinces that 
had been wrested from the Lombards. He relinquished 
to the Papacy Rome with its patrimony, the portions of 
Spoleto and Benevento that had already yielded to the 
See of S. Peter, the southern provinces that owned the 
nominal ascendency of Byzantium, the islands and 
the cities of the Exarchate and Pentapolis which 
formed no part of the Lombard conquest. By this 
stipulation no real power was accorded to the Papacy, 
nor did the new Empire surrender its paramount 
rights over the peninsula at large. The Italian kingdom 
transferred to the Franks in 800 was the kingdom 
founded by the Lombards; while the outlying and un- 
conquered districts were placed beneath the pro- 
tectorate of the power which had guided their eman- 
cipation. 

Thus the dualism introduced into Italy by Theo- 
The Empire doric’s veneration for Rome, and confirmed 
rs a by the failure of the Lombard conquest, 
tend their Was ratified by the settlement which estab- 
sway. lished a new Empire in Western Christen- 
dom. Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and the maritime republics 
of the South, excluded from the kingdom, were left to 
pursue their own course; and this is the chief among 
many reasons why they rose so early into prominence. 


THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 17 


Rome consolidated her ancient patrimonies and ex- 
tended her rectorship in the centre, while the Frankish 
kings who succeeded each other at Pavia through eight 
reigns developed their rule upon feudal principles 
by parcelling the lands among their counts. New 
marches were formed, traversing the previous Lombard 
fabric, and introducing divisions that decentralized the 
kingdom. Thus the great vassals of Ivrea, Verona, 
Tuscany, and Spoleto raised themselves against 
Pavia; and when Berengar, the last independent 
sovereign, strove to enforce his declining authority 
he was met with the hatred and resistance of his 
subjects. 

The kingdom Berengar attempted to maintain 
against his vassals and the Church was vir- The Lom- - 
tually abrogated by Otho I.,whom the Lom- pba 
bard nobles summoned into Italy. When he guished. 
appeared in 961, he was crowned Emperor at Rome 
and assumed the title of King of Italy. Thus the 
Lombard kingdom, after enduring for two centuries, 
was merged in the Empire; and from this time the 
two great potentates in the peninsula were an unarmed 
Pontiff and an absent Emperor. The subsequent his- 
tory of the Italians shows how they succeeded in 
reducing both these powers to the condition of princi- 
ples; maintaining the pontifical and imperial ideas, 
but repelling the practical authority of either potentate. 
Otho created new marches and gave them to men of 
German origin. Thus the ancient Italy of Lombards 
and Franks was superseded by a new Italy of German 
feudalism, owing allegiance to a suzerain whose 
interests detained him in the provinces beyond the 


Alps. 


18 THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


At the same time the organization of the Church 
Thecities was fortified. The bishops were placed 
gain import- ‘ ‘ é ; 
anceunder ON an equality with the counts in the chief 
the shadow cities, and viscounts were created to repre- 
Church. sent their civil jurisdiction. It is difficult to 
exaggerate the importance of Otho’s concessions to the 
bishops. During the preceding period of Frankish 
rule about one-third of the soil of Italy had been yielded 
to the Church, which had the right of freeing its vas- 
sals from military service ; and since the ecclesiastical 
sees were founded upon ancient sites of Roman civiliza- 
tion, without regard to the military centres of the 
barbarian kingdoms, the new privileges of the bishops 
accrued to the indigenous population. Milan, for 
example, downtrodden by Pavia, still remained the 
major see of Lombardy. Aquileia, though a desert, 
had her patriarch, while Cividale, established as a 
fortress to coerce the neighboring Roman towns, was 
ecclesiastically but a village. At this epoch a third 
power emerged in Italy. Berengar had given the 
cities permission to inclose themselves with walls in 
order to repel the invasions of the Huns. Otho 
respected their right of self-defence, and from the date 
of his coronation the history of the free-burghs begins 
in Italy. It is at first closely connected with the 
changes wrought by the extinction of the kingdom of 
Pavia, by the exaltation of the clergy, and by the dis- 
location of the previous system of feud-holding which 
followed upon Otho’s determination to remodel the 
country in the interest of the German Empire. The 
ancient landmarks of nobility were altered and con- 
fused. The cities under their bishops assumed a nove) 
tharacter of independence. ‘Those of Roman origin, 


THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 19 


being ecclesiastical centres, had a distinct advantage 
over the more recent foundations of the Lombard and 
the Frankish monarchs. The Italic population every- 
where emerged and displayed a vitality that had been 
crushed and overlaid by centuries of invasion and mili- 
tary oppression. 

The burghs at this epoch may be regarded as lumi- 
nous points in the dense darkness of Th 

: 2 : e form of 

feudal aristocracy. Gathering round their government 
cathedral as a centre, the towns inclose their Rie ke 
dwellings with walls and bastions, from which i 
they gaze upon a country bristling with castles, oc- 
cupied by serfs, and lorded over by the hierarchical 
nobility. Within the city the bishop and the count 
hold equal sway; but the bishop has upon his side the 
sympathies and passions of the burghers. The first 
effort of the towns is to expel the count from their 
midst. Some accident of misrule infuriates the citi- 
zens. They fly to arms and are supported by the 
bishop. The count has to retire to the open country, 
where he strengthens himself in his castle. Then the 
bishop remains victor in the town, and forms a govern- 
ment of rich and noble burghers, who control with him 
the fortunes of the new-born State. The constitution 
of the city at this early period was simple. At the 
head of its administration stood the bishop, with the 
fopolo of enfranchised burghers. The Commune included 
the Fofolo, together with the non-qualified inhabitants, 
and was represented by consuls, varying in number 
according to the division of the town into quarters, 
Thus the Commune and the Popolo were originally 
separate bodies, and this distinction has been perpetu- 
ated in the architecture of those towns which still can 


20 THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


show a Palazzo del FPopolo apart from the Palazzo deb 
Commune. Since the affairs of the city had to be con- 
ducted by discussion, we find councils corresponding 
to the constituent elements of the burgh. There is the 
Parlemento, in which the inhabitants meet together to 
hear the decisions of the bishop and the Popolo, or to 
take measures in extreme cases that affect the city asa 
whole; the Gran Consiglio, which is only open to duly- 
qualified members of the Popolo; and the Credenza, 
or privy council of specially delegated burghers, who 
debate on matters demanding secrecy and diplomacy. 
Such, generally speaking, and without regard to local 
differences, was the internal constitution of an Italian 

city during the supremacy of the bishops. 
In the North of Italy not a few of the greater vassals, 
among whom may be mentioned the Houses 


ia ee of Canossa, Montferrat, Savoy, and Este, 
under the creations of the Salic Emperors, looked with 
ae favor upon the development of the towns, 


while some nobles went so far as to con- 
stitute themselves feudatories of bishops. At the 
_ same time, while Lombardy and Tuscany were estab- 
lishing their municipal liberties, a sympathetic move- 
ment began in Southern Italy which resulted in the 
conquest of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily by the Nor- 
mans. Omitting all the details of this episode, than 
which nothing more dramatic is presented in the history 
of modern nations, it must be enough to point out here 
that the Normans finally severed Italy from the Greek 
Empire, gave a monarchical stamp to the south of the 
peninsula, and brought the government intothe sphere 
of national politics under the protection of the Pope. 
Up to the date of its conquest Southern Italy had a 


THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 21 


separate and confused history. It now entered the 
Italian community, and, by the peculiar circumstances 
of its cession to the Holy See, was destined in the 
future to become the chief instrument whereby the 
Popes disturbed the equilibrium of the peninsula in 
furtherance of their ambitious schemes. 

The greatness of the Roman cities under the popu- 
lar rule of their bishops is illustrated by ye inan- 
Milan, second only to Rome in the last days ence of 
of the Empire. Milan had been reduced aie hes 
to abject misery by the kings, who spared archbishop, 
no pains to exalt Pavia at the expense of Hertbert. 
her elder sister. After the dissolution of the kingdom 
she started into new life, and in 1037 her archbishop, 
Heribert, was singled out by Conrad II. as the pro- 
tagonist of the episcopal revolution against feudalism. 
Heribert was, in truth, the hero of the burghs in their 
first strife for independence. It was he who devised 
the Carroccio, an immense car drawn by oxen, bearing 
the banner of the Commune, with an altar and priests 
ministrant, around which the pikemen of the city 
mustered when they went to war. This invention of 
Heribert’s was soon adopted by the cities throughout 
Italy. It gave cohesion and confidence to the citizens, 
reminded them that the Church was on their side in 
the struggle for freedom, and served as symbol of their 
military strength in union. The first authentic records 
of a Parliament, embracing the nobles of the Popolo, 
the clergy, and the multitude, are transmitted to us by 
the Milanese Chronicles, in which Heribert figures as 
the president of a republic. From this date Milan 
takes the lead in the contests for municipal indepen- 
dence. Her institutions, like that of the Carroccia, 


22 THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


together with her tameless spirit, are communicated 
to the neighboring cities of Lombardy, cross the 
Apennines, and animate the ancient burghs of Tus- 
cany. 

Having founded their liberties upon the episcopal 
The privi- presidency, the cities now proceeded to 
leges ob- claim the right of choosing their own bishops. 
tained 
through They refused the prelates sent them by 
Gregory VII. the Emperor, and demanded an election 
by the chapters of each town. This privilege was 
virtually won when the War of Investitures broke out 
in 1073. After the death of Gregory VI. in 1046, the 
Emperors resolved to enforce their right of nominating 
the Popes. The first two prelates imposed on Rome, 
Clement II. and Damasus II., died under suspicion of 
poison. Thus the Roman people refused a foreign 
Pope, as the Lombards had rejected the bishops sent 
to rule them. The next Popes, Leo IX. and Victor 
II., were persuaded by Hildebrand, who now appears 
upon the stage, to undergo a second election at Rome 
by the clergy and the people. They escaped assassina- 
tion. But the fifth, Stephen X., again died suddenly, 
and now the formidable monk of Soana felt himself 
powerful enough to cause the election of his own can- 
didate, Nicholas II. A Lateran Council, inspired by - 
Hildebrand, transferred the election of Popes to the 
Cardinals, and confirmed the privilege of cities to choose 
their bishops, subject to Papal ratification. In 1073 
Hildebrand assumed the tiara as Gregory VII., and 
declared a war that lasted more than forty years against 
the Empire. At its close in 1122 the Church and the 
Empire were counterpoised as mutually exclusive auto- 
cracies, the one claiming illimitable spiritual sway, the 


THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 23 


other recognized as no less illimitably paramount in 
civil society. 

One of the earliest manifestations of municipal vitality 
was the war of city against city, which be- , 
gan to blaze with fury in the first half of rivalry of 
the twelfth century, and endured so long as *he sities. 
free towns lasted to perpetuate the conflict. No sooner 
had the burghs established themselves beneath the 
presidency of their consuls than they turned the arms 
they had acquired in the war of independence against 
their neighbors. The phenomenon was not confined 
to any single district. It revealed a new necessity in 
the very constitution of the commonwealths. Penned 
up within the narrow limits of their petty dependencies, 
throbbing with fresh life, overflowing with a populace 
inured to warfare, demanding channels for their ener- 
gies in commerce, competing with each other on the 
paths of industry, they clashed in deadliest duels for 
breathing space and means of wealth. The occasions 
that provoked one commune to declare war upon its 
rival were trivial. The animosity was internecine and 
persistent, embittered by the partisanship of Papal and 
Imperial principles. Therefore, when Frederick Bar- 
barossa was elected in 1152, his first thought was to 
reduce the Garden of the Empire to order. Soon after 
his election he descended into Lombardy and formed 
two leagues among the cities of the North—the one 
headed by Pavia, the centre of the abrogated kingdom, 
the other by Milan, who inherited the majesty of Rome, 
and contained within her loins the future of Italian 
freedom. It will be enough for our present purpose to 
remember that in the course of that long contention 
both leagues made common cause against the Emperer 


24 ZHE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


drew the Pope, Alexander III., into their quarrel, and 
finally routed the Imperial forces in 1183 near the 
small village of Legnano, to the north of Milan. By 
the Peace of Constance, which followed, the autonomy 
of all the cities was amply guaranteed and recognized. 
The advantages won by Milan, who sustained the 
brunt of the Imperial onslaughts, and by 
the splendor of her martyrdom surmounted 
acquire more the petty jealousies of her municipal rivals, 
sheer ne were extended to the cities of Tuscany. 
After the date of that compact, signed by the Emperor 
and his insurgent subjects,the burghs obtained an 
assured position as a third power between the Empire 
and the Church. The most remarkable point in the 
history of this contention is the unanimous submission 
of the Communes to what they regarded as the just 
suzerainty of Czesar’s representative. Though they 
were omnipotent in Lombardy, they took no measures 
for closing the gates of the Alps against the Germans. 
The Emperor was free to come and go as he listed ; 
and when peace was signed, he reckoned the burghers 
who had beaten him by arms and policy among his loyal 
vassals. Still, the spirit of independence in Italy had 
been amply asserted. This is notably displayed in the 
address presented to Frederick, before his coronation, 
by the senate of Rome. Regenerated by Arnold of 
Brescia’s revolutionary mission, the Roman people 
assumed its antique majesty in these remarkable words : 
“Thou wast a stranger, I have made thee citizen; 
thou camest from regions beyond the Alps, I have con- 
ferred on thee the principality.” Presumptuous boast 
as this sounded in the ears of Frederick, it proved that 
the Communes were now taking their ground against 


THE KISE OF THE COMMUNES. 25 


the Church and the barbarians. They still recognized 
the Empire, because the Empire reflected the glory of 
Italy, and was the crown which gave to its people the 
presidency of civilization. They still recognized the 
authority of the Church, because the Church was the 
eldest daughter of Italy emergent from the wreck of 
Roman society. But the Communes had become con- 
scious of their right to stand apart from either. 
Strengthened by their contest with Frederick Bar- 
barossa, recognized in their rights as bellig- am. nobles 
erent powers, and left to their own guidance lose in 
by the Empire, the cities were now free to ®thority. 
prosecute their wars upon the remnants of feudalism. 
The town, as we have learnt to know it, was overlooked 
from neighboring heights by castles, where the nobles 
still held undisputed authority over serfs of the soil. 
Against these dominating fortresses every city, with 
_ singular unanimity, directed the forces it had formed in 
the preceding conflicts. At the same time, the muni- 
cipal struggles of commune against commune lost none 
of their virulence. The counts, pressed on all sides by 
_ the towns that had grown up around them, adopted the 
policy of pitting one burgh against another. Whena 
noble was attacked by the township nearest his castle, 
he espoused the animosities of a more distant city, com- 
promised his independence by accepting its captaincy, 
and thus became the servant or ally of a republic. In 
his desperation he emancipated his serfs; and so the 
country-folk chiefly profited by these dissensions 
between the cities and their feudal masters, This new 
phase of republican evolution lasted over a long and ill- 
defined period, assuming different characters in differ- 
ent centres ; but the end of it was that the nobles were 


26 THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


forced to submit to the cities. They were admitted to 
the burgherships, and agreed to spend a certain portion 
of every year in the palaces they raised within the cir- 
cuit of the walls. Thus the counts placed themselves 
beneath the jurisdiction of the consuls, and the Italic 
population absorbed into itself the relics of Lombard, 
Frank, and German aristocracy. 
Still, the gain upon the side of the republics was not 
clear. Though the feudal lordship of the 
* hed of nobles had been destroyed, their wealth, their 
instituted, | Jands,and their prestige remained untouched, 
In the city they felt themselves but aliens. 
Their real home was still the castle on the neighboring 
mountain. Nor, when they stooped to become burghers 
had they relinquished the use of arms. Instead of 
building peaceable dwelling-houses in the city, they 
filled its quarters with fortresses and towers, whence 
they carried on feuds among themselves, and imperilled 
the safety of the streets. The authority of the consuls 
proved insufficient to maintain an equilibrium between 
the people and the nobles. Accordingly, a new magis- 
trate started into being, combining the offices of supreme 
justiciary and military dictator. When Frederick Bar- 
barossa attempted to govern the rebellious Lombard 
cities in the common interest of the Empire, he estab- 
lished in their midst a foreign judge, called Podesta, 
** guast habens potestatem Imperatoris in hacparte.” This 
institution only served at the moment to inflame and 
embitter the resistance of the Communes ; but the title 
of Podesta was subsequently conferred upon the official 
summoned to maintain an equal balance between the 
burghers and the nobles. The lordship of the burgh 
‘still resided with the consuls, wro from this time forward 


THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 27 


began to lose their individuality in the college of the 
Signoria—calied Priori, Anztani, or Rettori, as the case 
might be in various districts. 

The Italian republics had reached this stage 
when Frederick II. united the Empire The opposi- 
and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. fon of the 

yt apacy to 
It was a crisis of the utmost moment for Frederick 
Italian independence. Master of the south, U- 
Frederick sought to reconquer the lost prerogatives 
of the Empire in Lombardy and Tuscany; nor is 
it impossible that he might have succeeded in uniting 
Italy beneath his sway but for the violent animosity of 
the Church, The warfare of extermination carried on 
by the Popes against the House of Hohenstauffen was 
no proof of their partiality for the cause of freedom. 
They dreaded the reality of a kingdom that should 
base itself on Italy and be the rival of their own 
authority. Therefore they espoused the cause of the 
free burghs against Frederick, and when the north was 
devastated by his vicars, they preached a crusade 
against Ezzelino da Romano. 

While Frederick foreshadowed the comparatively 
modern tyrants of the coming age, Ezzelino 
da Romano, his vicar in the north of Italy, ster da, 

ane 5 omano. 
represented the atrocities towards which mee 
they always tended to degenerate. Regarding himself 
with a sort of awful veneration as the divinely-appointed 
scourge of humanity, this monster in his lifetime was 
execrated as an aberration from “the kindly race of 
men,” and after his death he became the hero of a 
fiendish mythus. But in the succeeding centuries of 
Italian history his kind was only too common ; the 
immorality with which he worked out his selfish 


28 THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


aims was systematically adopted, as we shall see, by 
princes like the Visconti, and reduced to rule by theo- 
rists like Machiavelli. Ezzelino, a small, pale,wiry man, 
with terror in his face, and enthusiasm for evil in his 
heart, lived a foe to luxury, cold to the pathos of 
children, dead to the enchantment of women. His one 
passion was the greed of power, heightened by the lust 
for blood. Originally a noble of the Veronese Marches, 
he founded his illegal authority upon the captaincy of 
the Imperial party delegated to him by Frederick. 
Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre, and Belluno con- 
ferred on him judicial as well as military supremacy. 
How he fearfully abused his power, how a _ crusade 
was preached against him, and how he died in silence 
like a boar at bay, rending from his wounds the 
dressings that his foes had placed there to keep him 
alive, are notorious matters of history. At Padua 
alone he erected eight prisons, two of which contained 
as many as three hundred captives each ; and though 
the executioner never ceased to ply his trade there, 
they were always full. These dungeons were designed 
to torture by their noisomeness, their want of air and 
light and space. Ezzelino made himself terrible not 
merely by executions and imprisonments, but also by 
mutilations and torments. When he captured Friola 
he caused the population of all ages, sexes, occupations, 
to be deprived of their eyes, noses, and legs, and to be 
cast forth to the mercy of the elements. On another 
occasion he walled up a family of princes in a castle 
and left them to die of famine. Wealth, eminence, 
and beauty attracted his displeasure no less than 
insubordination or disobedience. Nor was he less 
crafty than cruel. Sons betrayed their fathers, friends 


ene as 
Ait \ 4 
ee 


— ps ee — - 


THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 29 


their comrades, under the fallacious safeguard of his 
promises. A gigantic instance of his scheming was the 
coup-de-main by which he succeeded in entrapping 
11,000 Paduan soldiers, only 200 of whom escaped the 
miseries of his prisons. Thus by his absolute con- 
tempt of law, his inordinate cruelty, his prolonged 
massacres, and his infliction of plagues upon the whole 
peoples, Ezzelino established the ideal in Italy of a 
tyrant marching to his end by any means whatever, 
In vain was the humanity of the race revolted by the 
hideous spectacle. Vainly did the monks assemble 
pity-stricken multitudes upon the plain of Paquara to 
atone with tears and penitence for the insults offered 
to the saints in heaven by Ezzelino’s fury. It laid a 
deep hold upon the Italian imagination, and by the 
glamour of loathing that has strength to fascinate 
proved in the end contagious. 

In the controversy that shook Italy from north to 
south the parties of Guelf and Ghibelline, 
of the Papacy and the Empire respectively, 
took shape and acquired an ineradicable 
force. All the previous humors and discords of the 
nation were absorbed by them. The Guelf party 
meant the people of the Communes, the men of in- 
dustry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, 
the friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibelline 
party included the naturalized nobles, the men of arms 
and idleness, the advocates of feudalism, the politicians 
who regarded constitutional progress with disfavor. 
Divided by irreconcilable ideals, each side became 
eager to possess the city for itself, each prepared to 
die for its adopted principles. The victorious party 
then organizes the government in its own interest, 


Guelfs and 
Ghibellines, 


3° THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


establishes itself in a palazzo apart from the Commune, 
where it develops its machinery at home and abroad, 
and strengthens its finances by forced contributions 
and confiscations. The exiles make common cause 
with members of their own faction in an adverse 
burgh; and thus the most distant centres are drawn 
into the network of a common dualism. In this way, 
we are justified in saying, Italy achieved her national 
consciousness through strife and conflict; for the 
Communes ceased to be isolated, cemented by tem- 
porary leagues or engaged in merely local dissensions. 
They were brought together and connected by the 
sympathies and antipathies of an antagonism which 
embraced and dominated the municipalities, and merged 
the titular leaders of the struggle, Pope and Emperor, 
in the uncontrollable tumult. 
Society was riven down to its foundation. Rancors 
dating from the thirteenth century endured 
ghettos long after the great parties ceased to have 
partyfeeling, 2 Meaning. They were perpetuated in 
customs and expressed themselves in the 
most trivial details. Banners, ensigns, and heraldic 
colors followed the divisions of the factions. Ghibel- 
lines wore feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelfs 
upon the other. Ghibellines cut fruit at table cross- 
wise, Guelfs straight down. In Bergamo some Cala- 
brians were murdered by their host, who -discovered 
by their way of slicing garlic that they sided with the 
hostile party. Ghibellines drank out of smooth, and 
Guelfs out of chased, goblets. Ghibellines wore white, 
and Guelfs red, roses. Yawning, passing in the street, 
throwing dice, gestures in speaking or swearing, were 
used as pretexts for distinguishing one half of Italy 


THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 31 


from the other. So late as the middle of the fifteenth 
century, the Ghibellines of Milan tore the crucifix 
from the high altar of the Cathedral at Crema and 
buried it, because the face turned to the Guelf shoulder. 
Every great city has a tale of love and death that 
carries the contention of its adverse families into the 
region of romance and legend. The story of Romeo 
and Juliet at Verona is a myth which brings both 
factions into play: the well-meaning intervention of 
peace-making monks, and the ineffectual efforts of the 
Podesta to curb the violence of party warfare. 

During the stress and storm of the fierce conflict car- 
ried on by Guelfs and Ghibellines, the Po- ee 

; aptain 
desta fell into the second rank. He had of the Peo- 
been created to meet an emergency ; but now Pile insti- 
. : ° uted, 

the discord was too vehement for arbitration. 
A new functionary appears, with the title of Captain of 
the People. Chosen when one or other of the factions 
gains supreme power in the burgh, he represents the 
victorious party, takes the lead in proscribing their 
opponents, and ratifies on his responsibility the changes 
introduced into the constitution. The old magistracies 
and councils, meanwhile, are not abrogated. The 
Consiglio del Popolo, with the Capitano at its head, 
takes the lead, and a new member, called the Consigho 
della Parte, is found beside them, watchful to main- 
tain the policy of the victorious faction. But the 
Consiglio del Commune, with the Podesta, who has not 
ceased to exercise judicial functions, still subsists. 
The Priors form the Signory, as of old. The Credenza 
goes on working, and the Gran Consiglio represents 
the body of privileged burghers. The victorious party 
does but tyrannize over the city it has conquered, and 


32 THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 


manipulates the ancient constitution for its own ad- 
vantage. In this clash of Guelf with Ghibelline the 
beneficiaries were the lower classes of the people. 
Excluded from the Popolo of episcopa! and consular 
revolutions, the trades and industries of the great 
cities now assert their claims to be enfranchised. The 
advent of the 47véz is the chief social phenomenon of 
the crisis. Thus the final issue of the conflict was 
a new Italy, deeply divided by factions that were 
little understood because they were so vital, because 
they represented two adverse currents of national 
energy, incompatible, irreconcilable, eternal in antagon- 
ism as the poles. But this discordant nation was 
more commercial and more democratic. Families 
of merchants rose upon the ruins of the old nobility. 
Roman cities of industry reduced their military rivals 
of earlier or later origin to insignificance. The plain, 
the river, and the port asserted themselves against the 
mountain fastness and the barrack burgh. The several 
classes of society, triturated, shaken together, levelled 
by warfare and equalized by industry, presented but 
few obstacles to the emergence of commanding person- 
alities, however humble, from the ranks. | 


IIT. 


THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 


T was under the rule of despots—men of diverse 

origin, though for the most part displaying great 
strength of character—that the conditions of the Re- 
naissance were evolved. Under tyrannies, in the midst 
of intrigues, wars, and revolutions, the peculiar in- 
dividuality of the Italians obtained its ultimate de- 
velopment. This individuality, as remarkable for 
salient genius and different talent as for self-conscious 
and deliberate vice, determined the qualities of the 
Renaissance, and affected by example the whole of 
Europe. 

If we examine the constitution of these tyrannies, 
we find abundant proof of their despotic yo nature 
nature. The succession from father to and effect of 
son was always uncertain. Legitimacy of i eat WEG 
birth was hardly respected. The sons of Popes ranked 
with the proudest of aristocratic families. Nobility 
was less regarded in the choice of a ruler than personal 
ability. Power once acquired was maintained by 
force, and the history of the ruling families is one 
catalogue of crime. Yet the cities thus governed were 
orderly and prosperous. Police regulations were care- 
fully maintained by governors whose interest it was to 


34 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 


rule a quiet state. Culture was widely diffused with- 
out regard to rank or wealth. Public edifices of 
colossal grandeur were multiplied. Meanwhile the 
people at large were being fashioned to that self: 
conscious and intelligent activity which is fostered 
by the modes of life peculiar to political and social 
centres in a condition of continued rivalry and 
change. 

In Italy, where there existed no time-honored hier- 
How itwas archy of classes and no fountain of nobility 
maintained. in the person of a sovereign, one man 
was a match for another, provided he knew how to 
assert himself. To the conditions of a society based 
on these principles we may ascribe the unrivalled 
emergence of great personalities among the tyrants. 
In the contest for power and in the maintenance of an 
illegal authority the picked athletes came to the front. — 
The struggle by which they established their tyranny, 
the efforts by which they defended it against foreign 
foes and domestic adversaries, trained them to endur- 
ance and daring. They lived habitually in an atmos. 
phere of peril which taxed all their energies. Theit 
activity was extreme, and their passions corresponded 
to their vehement vitality. When a weakling was born 
in a despotic family his brothers murdered him, or he 
was deposed by a watchful rival. Thus only gladiators 
of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to re 
ligious and moral scruples, dead to natural affection, 
perfected in perfidy, scientific in the use of cruelty 
and terror, employing first-rate faculties of brain 
and bodily powers in the service of transcendent 
egotism, could survive and hold their own upon this 
perilous arena. 


THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 35 


To record all the instances of crime revenged by 
crime, of murder following on treachery, 
a large volume might be compiled con- The general 

ae : : , ._ character of 
taining nothing but the episodes in this the despots, 
grim history of despotism, now tragic and 
pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, 
now despicable from the baseness of the motives, at 
one time revolting through excess of physical horrors, 
at another fascinating by the spectacle of heroic cour- 
age, intelligence, and resolution. Isolated, crime- 
haunted, and remorseless, at the same time fierce and 
timorous, the despot not unfrequently made of vice a 
fine art for his amusement, and openly defied human- 
ity. His pleasures tended to extravagance. Inordi- 
nate lust and refined cruelty sated his irritable and 
jaded appetites. He destroyed pity in his soul and 
spent his brains upon the invention of new tortures. 
From the game of politics, again, he won a feverish 
pleasure, playing for states and cities as a man plays 
chess, endeavoring to extract the utmost excitement 
from the varying turns of skill and chance. But it 
would be an exaggeration to assert that all the princes 
of Italy were of this sort, We shall see that the saner 
and nobler among them found a more humane enjoy- 
ment in the consolidation of their states, the cementing 
of their alliances, the society of learned men, the 
friendship of greaz artists, the building of palaces and 
churches, the execution of vast: schemes of conquest. 
Some, indeed, we shall find, combined the vices of a 
barbarian with the enthusiasm of a scholar, while others, 
again, exhibited every personal virtue with moderation 
in statecraft and a noble width of culture. But the 
tendency to degenerate was fatal to all the despotic 


36 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 


houses; the strain of tyranny proved too strong. 
Crime, illegality, or the sense of peril, descending from 
father to son, produced monsters in the shape of men. 
The last Visconti, the last La Scala, the last Sforza, 
the last Malatesta, the last Farnesi, the last Medici 
are among the worst specimens of human nature. 

The power of the Viscontiin Milan was founded upon 
The Vis- that of the Della Torre family, who preceded 
conti. them as captains of the people at the end of 
the thirteenth century. Otho, Archbishop of Milan, 
first laid a substantial basis for the dominion of his 
house by imprisoning Napoleone Della Torre and five 
of his relatives in three iron cages, in 1277, and by 
causing his nephew, Matteo Visconti, to be nominated 
both by the Emperor and the people of Milan as 
Imperial Vicar. Matteo, who headed the Ghibelline 
party in Lombardy, was the model of a prudent Italian 
despot. From 1311, when he finally succeeded to the 
sovereignty, to 1322, when he abdicated in favor of his 
son Galeazzo, he ruled his states by force of character, 
craft, and insight, more than by violence and cruelty. 

Caleazzo was less fortunate than Matteo, surnamed 
Giles or Grandeby the Lombards. The Emperor, 
the son, Louis of Bavaria, threw him into prison on 
en 204 the occasion of his visit to Milan in 1327, 
son,of Il and only released him at the intercession 
Grande. of his friend, Castruccio Castracane. He 
married Beatrice d’Este, the widow of Nino di Gallura, 
of whom Dante speaks in the eighth canto of the 
“ Purgatory,” and had by her a son named Azzo. Azzo 
consolidated his power by the murder of his uncle 
Marco, in 1329, and on his decease in 1339 was sue 
ceeded by another uncle, Lucchino. 


THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 39 


In Lucchino the darker side of the Visconti char. 
acter appears for the first time. Cruel, 
moody, and jealous, he passed his life in ne 
perpetual terror. His nephews, Galeazzo vanni, Arch- 
and Barnabas, conspired against him and ee of 
were exiled to Flanders. He left sons, but seth Ghee: 
none of proved legitimacy. Hewas there- 
fore succeeded by his brother Giovanni, Archbishop 
of Milan. This prince, the friend of Petrarch, was 
one of the most notable characters of the fourteenth 
century. His reign marks a new epoch in the despot- 
ism of the Visconti. Their dynasty, though based 
on force and maintained by violence, has come to be 
acknowledged, and we shall soon see them allying 
themselves with the royal houses of Europe. 

After the death of Giovanni, Matteo’s sons were 
extinct. But Stefano, the last of the family, alk ah aaa 
had left three children, Matteo, Bernabo, gateazzo, 
and Galeazzo. Matteo abandoned himself grandsons of 
to bestial sensuality, and his two brothers, Gee 
finding him both feeble and likely to bring discredit 
on their rule, caused him to be assassinated in 1355, 
They then jointly swayed the Milanese with unanimity 
remarkable in despots. 

Galeazzo was distinguished as the handsomest man 
of his age. Hewas tall and graceful, with Galeazo 
golden hair, which he wore in long plaits Visconti. 
or tied upin a net, or else loose and crowned with 
flowers. Fond of display and magnificence, he spent 
most of his vast wealth in shows and festivals, and in the 
building of palaces and churches. The same taste for 
splendor led him tv seek royal marriages for his 


38 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 


children. His daughter Violante was wedded to the 
Duke of Clarence, son of Edward ITI. of England, whe 
received with her for dowry two hundred thousand 
golden florins and five cities bordering on Piedmont. 
It must have been a strange experience for this brother 
of the Black Prince, leaving London, where the streets 
were still unpaved, the houses thatched, the beds laid 
on straw, and where wine was sold as a medicine, to 
pass through the luxurious palaces of Lombardy, 
walled with marble, and raised high above smooth 
streets of stone. On this occasion Galeazzo is said to 
have made splendid presents to more than two hundred 
Englishmen, so that he was reckoned to have outdone 
the greatest kings in generosity. With equal display 
and extravagance he married his son Gian Galeazzo to 
Isabella, daughter of King John of France. 

Galeazzo held his court at Pavia. His brother 
Bernabo reigned at Milan. Bernabo displayed 
Visconti. all the worst vices of the Visconti in his cold- 
blooded cruelty. ‘Together with his brother, he devised 
and caused to be publicly announced by edict that 
State criminals would be subjected to a series of tor- 
tures extending over the space of forty days. In this 
infernal programme every variety of torment found a 
place, and days of respite were so calculated as to pro- 
tong the lives of the victims for further suffering, till af 
last there was little left of them that had not been 
hacked and hewed and flayed away. 

Galeazzo died in 1378, and was.succeeded in his own 
Sian portion of the Visconti domain by his son 
Galeazzo Gian Galeazzo. Now began one of those 
Visconti. long, slow, internecine struggles which 
were so common between the members of the ruling 


HL RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 39 


families in Italy. Bernabo and his sons schemed to 
get possession of the young prince’s estate. He, on 
the other hand, determined to supplant his uncle, and 
to re-unite the whole Visconti principality beneath his 
own sway. Craft was the weapon which he chose in 
this encounter. Shutting himself up in Pavia, he made 
no disguise of his physical cowardice, which was real, 
while he simulated a timidity of spirit wholly akin to 
his temperament. He pretended to be absorbed in 
religious observances, and gradually induced his uncle 
and cousins to despise him as a poor creature whom 
they could make short work of when occasion served. 
In 1385, having thus prepared the way for treason, he 
avowed his intention of proceeding on a pilgrimage to 
Our Lady of Varese. Starting from Pavia with a body- 
guard of Germans, he passed near Milan, where his 
uncle and cousins came forth to meet him. Gian Gal- 
eazzo feigned a courteous greeting ; but, when he saw his 
relatives within his grasp, he gave a watchword in 
German to his troops, who surrounded Bernabo and 
took him prisoner with his sons. Gian Galeazzo 
marched immediately into Milan, poisoned his uncle in 
a dungeon, and proclaimed himself sole lord of the 
Visconti heirship. 

The reign of Gian Galeazzo, which began with this 
coup-de-main (1385-1402), forms a very im- myo charac 
portant chapter in Italian history. Giovio ter of Gian 
describes him as having been a remarkably %1€2#20. 
sedate and thoughtful boy, so wise beyond his years 
that his friends feared he would not grow to man’s 
estate. No pleasures in after-life drew him away from 
business; hunting, hawking, women, had alike no 
charms for him. He took moderate exercise for the 


40 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 


preservation of his health, read and meditated much, 
and relaxed himself in conversation with men of letters, 
Pure intellect, in fact, had reached to perfect inde- 
pendence in this prince, who was far above the bois- 
terous pleasures and violent activities of the age in 
which he lived. In the erection of public buildings 
he was magnificent. The Certosa of Pavia and the 
Duomo of Milan owed their foundation to his sense of 
splendor. At the same time he completed the palace 
of Pavia which his father had begun, and which he 
made the noblest dwelling-house in Europe. The Uni- 
versity of Pavia was raised by him from a state of de- 
cadence to one of great prosperity, partly by munificent 
endowments, and partly by a wise choice of professors. 
In his military undertakings he displayed a kindred 
taste for vast engineering projects. He contemplated, 
and partly carried out, a scheme for turning the Mincio 
and the Brenta from their channels, and for drying up 
the lagoons of Venice. In this way he purposed to 
attack his last great enemy, the Republic of St. Mark, 
upon her strongest side. Yet, in the midst of these 
huge designs, he was able to attend to the most trifling 
details of economy. By applying mercantile machin- 
ery to the management of his vast dominions, at a 
time when public economy was but little understood in 
Europe, he raised his wealth enormously above that of 
his neighbors, As his personal timidity prevented him 
from leading his troops in the field, he found it neces- 
sary to employ paid generals, and took into his service 
all the chief condottier? of the day, thus giving an im- 
pulse to the custom which led to the corruption of the 
whole military system of Italy. 


THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. rh 


Gian Galeazzo’s schemes were first directed against 
the Scala dynasty. Founded, like that of gis animos: 
the Visconti, upon the Imperial authority, ity tothe 
it rose to its greatest height under the Ghi- 5°#!# family. 
belline general Can Grande, and his nephew Mastino, 
in the first half of the fourteenth century (1312-1351), 
Mastino had himself cherished the project of an Italian 
kingdom ; but he died before approaching its accom: 
plishment. The degeneracy of his house began with 
his three sons. The two younger killed the eldest; of 
the survivors, the stronger slew the weaker, and then 
died in 1374, leaving his domains to two of his bas- 
tards. One of these, named Antonio, killed the other 
in 1381, and afterwards fell a prey to the Visconti in 
1387. 

Having obtained possession of all the principal cities 
in Tuscany, and ruined their reigning fam- 
ilies, chiefly by the most despicable arts, His conquest, 
Gian Galeazzo followed up his success by sna Babe 
the annexation of Bologna, Siena, Lucca, 
and Pisa. All Italy and Germany had now begun to 
regard the usurpations of the Milanese despot with 
alarm. There remained no power, except the Republic 
of Florence and the exiled but invincible Francesco da 
Carrara of Padua, to withstand his further progress. 
Florence delayed his conquests in Tuscany. Fran- 
cesco managed to return to Padua, Still the peril 
which threatened the whole of Italy was imminent. 
The Duke of Milan was in the plenitude of manhood 
—rich, prosperous, and full of mental vigor. His ac 
quisitions were well cemented; his treasury brimful ; 
his generals highly paid. All his lieutenants in city 
and ia camp respected the irey will and the deep policy 


42 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS, 


of the despot who swayed their action from his arn» 
chair in Milan. He alone knew how to use the brains 
and hands that did him service, to keep them mutually 
in check, and by their regulated action to make him- 
self not one, but a score of men. At last, when all 
other hope of independence for Italy had failed, the 
plague broke out with fury in Lombardy. Gian Gale- 
azzo retired to his isolated fortress of Marignano in 
order to escape infection. Yet there, in 1402, he sick- 
ened. A comet appeared in the sky, to which he 
pointed, as a sign of his approaching death—“ God 
could not but signalize the end of so supreme a ruler,” 
he told his attendants. He died aged fifty-five. Italy 
drew a ceep breath. 

The systematic plan conceived by Gian Galeazzo 
The decline 10r the enslavement of Italy, the ability 
of the Vis- which sustained him in its execution, and 
conti power. the power with which he bent men to his 
will, are scarcely more extraordinary than the sudden dis- 
solution of the dukedom at his death. As long as he 
lived and held the band of great commanders he had 
trained in his service in leading-strings, all went well, 
But at his death his two sons were still mere boys. He 
had to entrust their persons, together with the conduct 
of his hardly-won dominions, to these captains in con- 
junction with the Duchess Catherine and a certain 
Francesco Barbavara. This man had been the duke’s 
body-servant, and was now the paramour of the 
duchess. The generals refused to act with them; and 
each seized upon such portions of the Visconti inher- 
itance as he could most easily acquire. The vast 
tyranny of the first Duke of Milan fell to pieces ina 
day. Many scions of the ejected families also recovered 


THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 43 


their authority. Meanwhile, Giovanni Maria Visconti 
was proclaimed Duke of Milan, and his brother Filippo 
Maria occupied Pavia. 

In the despotic families of Italy, as already hinted, 
there was a progressive tendency to de- | : 
generation. The strain of tyranny sus- ep 
tained by force and craft for generations, 
the abuse of power and pleasure, the isolation and 
dread in which the despots lived habitually, bred a 
kind of hereditary madness. This constitutional fero- 
city of the race appeared as monomania in Giovanni, 
and an organic timidity amounting to almost imbecility 
in his brother. Gian Maria distinguished himself 
chiefly by cruelty and lust. He used the hounds of 
his ancestors no longer in the chase of boars, but of 
living men. All the criminals of Milan, and all whom 
he could get denounced as criminals, even the partici- 
pators in his own enormities, were given up to his 
infernal sport. His huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, 
trained the dogs to their duty by feeding them on 
human flesh, and the duke watched them tear his 
victims in pieces with the ecstasy of a lunatic. In 
1412 some Milanese noblemen succeeded in mur- 
dering him, and threw his mangled corpse into the 
Street. 

Filippo Maria meanwhile had married the widow of 
Facino Cane, one of the most distinguished Filippo 
of his father’s generals, who brought him Maria Vis- 
nearly half a million of florins for dowry, tH 
together with her husband’s soldiers and the cities, 
he had seized after Gian Galeazzo’s death. He be- 
headed her six years afterwards on the strength of a 
false accusation which k~ ‘ad himself instigated; but 


44 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 


by this alliance he gradually recovered the Lombard 
portion of his father’s dukedom. The minor cities 
purged by murder of their usurpers, once more fell into 
the grasp of the Milanese despot, after a series of 
domestic and political tragedies that drenched their 
streets with blood. Piacenza was utterly depopulated. 
It is recorded that for the space of a year only three 
of its inhabitants remained within the walls. ; 

This Filippo, the last of the Visconti tyrants, was 
His death extremely ugly, and so sensitive about his 
opens the —jll-formed person that he scarcely dared to 
roy te mo show himself abroad. He habitually lived 
Sforza. in secret chambers, changing them fre- 
quently, and, when he issued from his palace, dis- 
regarded salutations in the street. As an instance 
of his nervousness, the chronicles report that he 
could not endure to hear the noise of thunder. At 
the same time he inherited much of his father’s insight 
into character, and the power of controlling men more 
bold and active than himself. But he lacked the keen 
decision and broad views of Gian Galeazzo. He 
vacillated in policy, and kept devising plots that had 
no result but his own disadvantage. Excess of caution 
made him surround the captains of his troops with 
spies, and check them at the moment when he feared 
they might become too powerful. This want of con 
fidence neutralized the advantage which he might 
have gained by his choice of fitting instruments. 
Thus his selection of Francesco Sforza for his general 
against the Venetians in 1431 was a wise one. But 
he could not attach the great soldier of fortune to 
himself. Sforza took the pay of Florence against his 
old patron, and in 1441 forced him to a ruinous peace: 


THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 43 


one of the conditions of which was the marriage of his 
only daughter, Bianca, to the son of the peasant of 
Cotignola. Bianca was illegitimate, and Filippo Maria 
had no male heir. The great family of the Visconti 
had dwindled away. Consequently, after the duke’s 
death in 1447, Sforza found his way open to the Duchy 
of Milan, which he first secured by force, and then 
claimed in right of his wife. An adverse claim was 
set up by the House of Orleans, Louis of Orleans 
having married Valentina, the legitimate daughter of 
Gian Galeazzo. But both of theseclaims were invalid, 
since the investiture granted by Wenceslaus to the first 
duke excluded females. So Milan was once again 
thrown open to the competition of usurpers. 

The inextinguishable desire for liberty in Milan 
blazed forth upon the death of the last 
duke. In spite of so many generations fees oh 
of despots, the people still regarded them- tains the 
selves as sovereign. But astate which had *™*edom. 
served the Visconti for nearly two centuries could not 
in a moment shake off its weakness and rely upon 
itself alone. Feeling the necessity of mercenary aid, 
the republic was short-sighted enough to engage Fran- 
cesco Sforza as commander-in-chief against the Vene- 
tians who had availed themselves of the anarchy in 
Lombardy to push their power west of the Adda. In one 
brilliant campaign he drove the Venetians back beyond 
the Adda, burned their fleet at Casal Maggiore on the 
Po, and utterly defeated their army at Caravaggio. 
Then he returned as conqueror to Milan, reduced the 
surrounding cities, blockaded the Milanese in their 
capital, and forced them to receive him as their duke 
in 1450. 


46 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 


Sforza got his name from his great physical strength 
r He was a peasant of the villiage of Cotig- 
TaNncesco ° ° : ° 
Sforza’s nola, who, being invited to quit the mat- 
groatape tock for a sword, threw his pickaxe into 
s an oak, and cried: “If it stays there it is 
a sign that I shall make my fortune.” The axe stuck 
in the tree, and Sforza went forth to found a line of 
dukes. He never obtained the sanction of the Empire 
to his title. But the great condottiere, possessing the 
substance, did not care for the external show of mon- 
archy. He ruled firmly, wisely, and for those times 
well, attending to the prosperity of his State, maintain- 
ing good discipline in her cities, and losing no ground 
by foolish and ambitious schemes. Louis XI. of 
France is said to have professed himself Sforza’s pupil 
in statecraft, than which no greater tribute could be 
paid to his political sagacity. In 1466 he died, leav- 
ing three sons—Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, the Cardi- 
nal Ascanio, and Lodovico, surnamed II Moro. 
‘“‘ Francesco’s crown,” says Ripamonti,“ was destined 
to pass to more than six inheritors, and 
prise pee these five successions were accomplished 
successors, by a series of tragic events in his family. 
Galeazzo, his son, was murdered because 
of his abominable crimes, in the presence of his peo- 
ple, before the altar, in the middle of the sacred rites. 
Giovanni Galeazzo, who followed him, was poisoned 
by his uncle, Lodovico. Lodovico was imprisoned by 
the French, and died of grief ina dungeon. One of 
his sons perished in the same way; and the other, 
after years of misery and exile, was restored in his 
childless old age to a throne which had been under- 
mined, and when he died his dynasty was extinct 


THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 47 


This was the recompense for the treason of Francesco 
to the State of Milan. It was for such successes that 
he passed his life in perfidy, privation, and danger.” 

Such was the condition of Italy at the end of the 
fifteenth century. Neither public nor pri- my, rreeae 
vate morality, in our sense of the word, lence of 
existed. The crimes of the tyrants against °™¢ 
their subjects and the members of their own fam- 
ilies had produced a correlative order of crime in the 
people over whom they tyrannized. Cruelty was met 
by conspiracy. Tyrannicide became honorable. 
Murders, poisonings, rapes, and treasons were common 
incidents of private as of public life. In cities like 
Naples bloodguilt could be atoned at an inconceivably 
low rate. The palaces of the nobles swarmed with 
professional cut-throats, and the great ecclesiastics 
claimed for their abodes the rights of sanctuary. 
Popes sold absolution for the most horrible excesses, 
and granted indulgences beforehand for the commis- 
sion of crimes of lust and violence. Success was the 
standard by which acts were judged; and the man 
who could help his friends, intimidate his enemies, 
and carve a way to fortune by any means he chose, 
was regarded as a hero. 

Yet it must not be overlooked that even in such a 
3oil the spirit of the Renaissance had 

k . -, The growth 

reached maturity, and was putting forth its ofthe 
choicest fruits. We may anticipate what Renaissance 
will be noticed again how at this time Filelfo seroma 
was receiving the pay of Filippo Maria Visconti; 
that Guarino of Verona was instructing the heir of 
Ferrara, and Vittorino da Feltre the children of the 
Marquis of Mantua. We think of Lionardo da Vinci 


48 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 


delighting Milan with his music and his magic world 
of painting ; of Boiardo singing the prelude to Ariosto’s 
melodies in Ferrara ; of Poliziano pouring forth honeyed 
eloquence at Florence ; of Ficino expounding Plato, 
and Pico della Mirandola dreaming of a reconciliation 
of the Hebrew, Pagan, and Christian traditions. It is 
well to note these facts while we record the ferocity 
and crimes of despots who seemed little likely to 
appreciate and protect these masters in arts and 
letters. But this wasanage in which even the wildest 
and most perfidious of tyrants felt the ennobling in- 
fluences and the sacred thirst of knowledge. 
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the Lord of Rimini, 
Sici might be selected as a true type of the 
igismondo ; m : 
Pandolfo princes who united a romantic zeal for 
Malatesta. culture with the vices of barbarians. The 
coins which bear the portraits of this man, together 
with the medallions in red Verona marble on his 
church at Rimini, show a narrow forehead protuberant 
above bushy eyebrows, a long hooked nose, hollow 
cheeks, and petulant, passionate, compressed lips. 
The whole face seems ready to flash with sudden vio- 
lence, to merge its self-control in a spasm of fury. 
This Malatesta killed three wives in succession, and 
committed outrages on his children. So much of him 
belongs to the mere savage. He caused the magnifi- 
cent church of S. Francesco at Rimini to be raised by 
Leo Alberti in a manner more worthy of a pagan pan- 
theon than of a Christian temple. He encrusted it 
with exquisite bas-reliefs in marble, the triumphs of 
the earliest Renaissance style, carved his own name 
and ensigns upon every scroll and frieze and point of 
vantage in the building, and dedicated a shrine there 


THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 49 


to his concubine—Dive Jsothe Sacrum. In the spirit 
of the Neo-pagan of the fifteenth century, he brought 
back from Greece the mortal remains of the philoso- 
pher Gemistos Plethon, buried them in a sarcophagus 
outside his church, with this epigraph : ‘These remains 
of Gemistus of Byzantium, chief of the sages of his 
day, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, son of Pandolfo, 
commander in the war against the king of the Turks in 
the Morea, induced by the mighty love with which he 
burns for men of learning, brought hither and placed 
within this chest, 1466.”’ He, the most fretful and tur- 
bulent of men, read books with patient care, and bore 
the contradictions of pedants in the course of long dis- 
cussions on philosophy, arts, and letters. At the same 
time, as condottiere, he displayed all the duplicities, 
cruelties, sacrileges, and tortuous policies to which 
the most accomplished villain of the age could have 
aspired, 

It is pleasant to be able to conclude these illustrations 
of the worst features of Italian despotism Frederick, 
with a brief sketch of the character of the Duke of 
good Duke Frederick, Count of Montefeltro, Ut>ime 
created Duke of Urbino in 1474 by Pope Sixtus IV, 
His life covers the better part of the fifteenth century (0. 
1422, @. 1482). A little corner of old Umbria lying 
between the Apennines and the Adriatic, Rimini and 
Ancona, formed his patrimony. Speaking roughly, 
the whole duchy was but forty miles square, and the 
larger portion consisted of bare hillsides and serrated 
ravines, Yet this poor territory became the centre of 
a splendid court. The chivalry of Italy flocked to 
Urbino in order to learn manners and the art of war 
from the most noble general of his day. The library con- 

& 


50 _ DHE ROLE OF THE DESPOTS. 


tained copies of all the Greek and Latin authors then 
discovered, the principal treatises on theology and 
Church history, a complete series of Italian poets, 
historiographers and commentators, various medical, 
mathematical, and legal works, essays on music, 
military tactics, and the arts, together with such 
Hebrew books as were accessible to copyists. Military 
service formed his trade. As a condoltiere, Federigo 
was famous in this age of broken faith for his sincerity 
and plain dealing. ‘To his soldiers in the field he was 
considerate and generous; to his enemies compassion- 
ate and merciful. But Frederick was not merely an 
accomplished prince. Concurrent testimony proves 
that he remained a good husband and a constant 
friend throughout his life, that he controlled his 
natural quickness of temper, and subdued the sensual 
appetites which in that age of lax morality he might 
have indulged without reproach. In his relations to 
his subjects he showed what a paternal monarch 
should be, conversing familiarly with the citizens of 
Urbino, accosting them with head uncovered, inquiring 
into the necessities of the poorer artisans, relieving 
the destitute, dowering orphan girls, and helping dis- 
tressed shopkeepers with loans, 

Frederick wore the Order of the Garter which 
Henry VII. conferred on him, the Neapolitan order of 
the Ermine, and the Papal decoration of the Rose, the 
Hat and the Sword. He served three pontiffs, two 
kings of Naples, and two dukes of Milan. The 
Republic of Florence, and more than one Italian 
League, appointed him their general in the field. It 
his military career was less brilliant than that of the 
two Sforzas, Piccino, or Carmagnuola, he avoided the 


THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 51 


crimes to which ambition led some of these men, and 
the rocks on which they struck. At his death he 
transmitted a flourishing duchy, a cultivated court, a 
renowned name, and the leadership of the Italian 
League to his son Guidobaldo, who died childless, after 
exhibiting for many years an example of patience in 
sickness and of dignified. cheerfulness under the re 
straint of enforced inaction. His wife, Elizabetta 
Gonzaga, one of the most famous women of her age, 
was no less a pattern of noble conduct and serene 
contentment. 


IV. 
THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


N the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth 
centuries, the authority of the Popes, both as 
heads of the Church and as temporal rulers, had been 
impaired by exile in France and by ruinous schisms. 
A new era began with the election of Nicholas V. in 
1447, and ended during the pontificate of Clement 
VII. with the sack of Rome in 1527. Through the 
whole of this period the Popes acted more as monarchs 
than as pontiffs, and the secularization of the Ses of 
Rome was carried to its utmost limits. The contrast 
between the sacerdotal pretensions and the personal 
immorality of the Popes was glaring; nor had the 
chiefs of the Church yet learned to regard the liber- 
alism of the Renaissance with suspicion. 

We find in the Popes of this period what has been 
mis retire already noticed in the despots—learning, 
of thePapacy the patronage of the arts, the passion for 
conducesto magnificence, and the refinements of polite 
their power. . 

culture, alternating and not unfrequently 
combined with barbarous ferocity of temper, and with 
savage and coarse tastes. On the one side we ob- 
serve a pagan dissoluteness which would have scan- 
dalized the parasites of Commodus and Nero; on the 
other, a seeming zeal for dogma worthy of S. Dominic. 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 53 


In the States of the Church the temporal power of the 
Popes, founded upon false donations, confirmed by 
tradition, and contested by rival despots, was an 
anomaly. In Rome itself their situation, though 
different, was no less peculiar. The government was 
ostensibly republican. The Pope had no sovereign 
rights, but only the ascendency inseparable from his 
wealth and from his position as Primate of Christen- 
dom. Italy, however, regarded the Papacy as indis- 
pensable to her prosperity, while Rome was proud to 
be called the metropolis of Christendom and ready to 
sacrifice the shadow of republican liberty for the 
material advantages which might accrue from the 
sovereignty of her bishop. Now was the proper mo- 
ment, therefore, for the Popes to convert their ill- 
defined authority into a settled despotism, to secure 
themselves in Rome as sovereigns, and to subdue the 
States of the Church to their temporal jurisdiction, 
The work was begun by Thomas of Sarzana, who» 
ascended the chair of S. Peter,in 1447, as 
Nicholas V. Educated at Florence, under ere ae 
the shadow of the house of Medici, he had imbibed 
those principles of deference to princely authority 
which were supplanting the old republican virtues 
throughout Italy. The schisms which had rent the 
Catholic Church were healed; and, finding no opposi- 
tion to his spiritual power, he determined to consoli- 
date the temporalities of his See. In this purpose he 
was confirmed by the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari, a 
Roman noble who had endeavored to rouse republi- 
can enthusiasm in the city at the moment of the Pope’s 
election, and who subsequently plotted against his 
liberty, if not his life. Porcari and his associates were 


54 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


put to death in 1453, and by this act the Pope pro. 
claimed himself a monarch. 

The vast wealth which the Jubilee of 1450 had 
His public poured into the Papal coffers he employed 
worksin in beautifying the city of Rome and in creat- 
Rome. ing a stronghold for the Sovereign Pontiff. 
The mausoleum of Hadrian, used long before as a for- 
tress in the Middle Ages, was now strengthened ; while 
the bridge of S. Angelo and the Leonine city were so 
connected and defended by a system of walls and out- 
works as to give the key of Rome into the hands of the 
Pope. A new Vatican began to rise, and the founda- 
tions of a nobler S. Peter’s Church were laid within the 
circuit of the Papal domain. Nicholas had, in fact, 
conceived the great idea of restoring the supremacy of 
Rome, not after the fashion of a Hildebrand, by enforc- 
ing the spiritual despotism of the Papacy, but by 
establishing the Popes as kings, by renewing the archi- 
tectural magnificence of the Eternal City, and by ren- 
dering his court the centre of European culture. In 
the will which he dictated on his death-bed to the 
princes of the Church, he set forth all that he had done 
for the secular and ecclesiastical architecture of Rome, 
explaining his deep sense of the necessity of securing 
the Popes from internal revolution and external force, 
together with his desire to exalt the Church by render- 
ing her chief seat splendid in the eyes of Christendom. 
This testament of Nicholas remains a memorable docu- 
ment. Nothing illustrates more forcibly the transition 
from the Middle Ages to the worldliness of the Renais- 
sance than the conviction of the Pontiff that the 
destinies of Christianity depended on the state and 
glory of the town of Rome. 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 55 


Of Alfonzo Borgia, who reigned for three years as 
Calixtus III., little need be said, except that 
his pontificate prepared for the greatness 
of his nephew, Roderigo Lenzuoli, known as Borgia in 
compliment to his uncle. The last days of Nicholas 
had been embittered by the fall of Constantinople 
(1453), and the imminent peril which threatened Europe 
from the Turks. The whole energies of Pius II. were 
then directed towards the one end of uniting the 
European nations against the infidel. 

fEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, as an author, an orator, a _ 
diplomatist, a traveller, and a courtier, bears rian ae “ 
a name illustrious in the annals of the Re- FA 
naissance. As a Pope he claims attention for the single- 
hearted zeal which he displayed in the vain attempt to 
rouse the piety of Christendom against the foes of civili- 
zation and the faith. Rarely has a greater contrast been 
displayed between the man and the pontiff than in the 
case of Pius. The pleasure-loving, astute, free-thinking 
man of letters and the world had become a Holy Father, 
jealous for Christian proprieties, and bent on stirring 
Europe by an appeal to motives which had lost their 
force three centuries before. Pius himself was not un- 
conscious of the discrepancy between his old and his 
new self. ‘‘Aneam rejicite, Pium recipite,’’ he exclaims 
in a celebrated passage of his ‘‘ Retractation,’’ where he 
declares his heartfelt sorrow for the irrevocable words 
of light and vain romance that he had scattered in his 
careless youth. Yet, though Pius II. proved a virtual 
failure by lacking the strength to lead his age either 
backwards to the ideal of earlier Christianity, or for- 
wards on the path of modern culture, he is the last 
Pope of the Renaissance period whom we can regard 


Calixtus III. 


56 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


with real respect. Those who follow, and with whose 
personal characters rather than their action as pontiffs 
we shall now be principally occupied, sacrificed the 
-, interests of Christendom to family ambition, secured 
\their sovereignty at the price of discord in Italy, trans- 
acted with the infidel and played the part of Antichrist 
‘upon the theatre of Europe. 

Paul II. was a Venetian named Pietro Barbi, who 
began life as a merchant. He had already 
shipped his worldly goods on board a trading 
vessel for a foreign trip, when news reached him that 
his uncle, of whom we shall see more during his enforced 
retirement from Rome, had been made Pope under the 
name of Eugenius IV. His call to the ministry con- 
sisted of the calculation that he could make his fortune 
in the Church with a Pope for uncle sooner than on 
the high seas by his wits. So he unloaded his bales, 
took to his book, became a priest, and at the age of 
forty-eight rose to the Papacy. Being a handsome 
man, he was fain to take the ecclesiastical title of For- 
mosus; but the cardinals dissuaded him from this 
parade of vanity, and he assumed the tiara as Paul in 
1464. <A vulgar love of show was his ruling character- 
istic. He spenf enormous Sums upon a collection of— 
~ jewels, and his tiara alone was valued at 200,000 golden 
florins. In all public ceremonies, whether ecclesias- 
tical or secular, he was splendid, delighting to sun him- 
self before the eyes of the Romans equally as the chief 
actor in an Easter benediction or in a carnival proces- 
sion. The poorer cardinals received subsidiesfrom his 
purse in order that they might add lustre to his pageants 
by their retinues. The arts found in him a munificent i 
patron. For the building of the palace of S. Marco, 


Paul I. 





THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 57 


which marks an abrupt departure from the previous 
Gothic style in vogue, he brought architects of em- 
inence to Rome, and gave employment to Mino da 
Fiesole, the sculptor, and to Giuliano da San Gallo, 
the wood-carver. The arches of Titus and Septimus 
Severus were restored at his expense, together with 
the statue of Marcus Aurelius and the horses of 
Monte Cavallo. This patronage of contemporary art, ' 
no less than the appreciation of classical monuments, — 
marked him as a Mecenas of the true Renaissance j 
type. | ot 
But the qualities of a dilettante were not Lp 
to shed lustre on a pontiff who spent the 
substance of the Church in heaping up val- His discour- 
Picea agement of 
uable curiosities, and whose love of hoard- jearning, 
ing was so extreme that, when bishoprics 
fell vacant, he often refused to fill them up, draw- 
ing their resources for his own use. His court was 
luxurious, and he was addicted to sensual lust. This 
would not, however, have brought his name into 
bad odor in Rome, where the Holy Father was already 
regarded as an Italian despot with certain sacerdotal 
additions. It was his prosecution of the Platonists 
which made.him unpopular_ in an age when men had 
the right to expect that, whatever happened, learning 
at ‘eat would be respected. The example of the 
Florentine and Neapolitan academies had encouraged 
the Romans to found a society for the discussion of 
philosophical questions. The Pope conceived that a 
nolitical intrigue was the real object of this club. Nor 
was the suspicion wholly destitute of color. The 
conspiracy of Porcari against Nicholas V. was still fresh 
in people’s memories ; nor was the position of the Pope 


58 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


in Rome as yet by any means secure. He seized the 
chief members of the Roman Academy, imprisoned 
them, put them to the torture, and killed some of them 
upon the rack. ‘‘ You would have taken the Castle of 
S. Angelo for Phalaris’ bull,” writes Platina; “the 
hollow vaults did so resound with the cries of innocent 
young men.” No evidence of a conspiracy could be 
extorted. Then Paul tried the survivors for unortho- 
doxy. They proved the soundness of their faith to 
the satisfaction of the Pope’s inquisitors. Nothing 
remained but to release them, or to shut them up 
in dungeons in order that people might not say 
the Holy Father had arrested them without due 
cause. The latter course was chosen. Platina, the 
historian of the Popes, was one of the Secretaries of 
the Briefs, and one of the Platonists whom Paul had 
tortured. 

Paul did not live as long as his comparative youth 
led people to anticipate. He died of apo- 
| plexy in 1471, alone and suddenly, after sup- 
ping on two huge water-melons. His successor was a 
man of base extraction, named Francesco della Rovere, 
born near the town of Savona on the Genoese Riviera. 
It was his whim to be thought noble ; so he bought the 
goodwill of the ancient house of Rovere of Turin by 
giving them two cardinals’ hats, and proclaimed himself 
their kinsman. Theirs is the golden oak-tree on an 
azure ground which Michael Angelo painted on the 
roof of the Sistine Chapel, in compliment to Sixtus and 
his nephew Julius. Having bribed the most venal 
members of the Sacred College, Francesco della Ro- 
vere was elected Pope and assumed the name of 
Sixtus IV. 


Sixtus IV. 


[a ee 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 59 


He began his career with a lie; for though he suo 
ceeded to the avaricious Paul, who had spent 
his time in amassing money which he did rer pai 
not use, he declared that he only found ata: 
5,000 florins in the Papal treasury. This 
assertion was proved false by the prodigality with which 
he lavished wealth immediately upon his nephews. It is 
difficult even to hint at the horrible suspicions which 
were cast upon the birth of two of the Pope’s nephews, 
and upon the nature of his weakness for them; yet the 
private life of Sixtus rendered the most monstrous 
stories plausible. We may, however, dwell upon the 
principal features of his nepotism ; for Sixtus was the 
first Pontiff who deliberately organized a system of 
lagi the Church in order to exalt his family to 
principalities. But Christendom beheld in Sixtus not 
merely the spectacle of a Pope who trafficked in the 
bodies of his subjects, and the holy things of his office, 
to squander ill-gotten gold upon abandoned minions. 
The peace of Italy was destroyed by desolating wars 
in the advancement of the most worthless favorites. 
Sixtus desired to annex Ferrara to the dominions of 
Girolamo Riario, the son of his sister Jolanda. Nothing 
stood in his way but the house of Este, firmly planted 
for centuries, and connected by marriage or alliance 
with all the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose 
lust for blood and broils was only equalled by his 
avarice and his libertinism, rushed with wild delight 
into a project which involved the discord of the whole 
peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade\ 
them, stirred up all the passions of the despots and set \ 
them together by the ears, called the Swiss mercenaries | 
into Lombardy, and when, finally, tired of fighting for / 


60 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


/his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of 
- Bagnolo, he died of rage in 1484. The Pope did 
actually die of disappointed fury, because peace had 
been restored to the country he had mangled for the 
sake of a favorite nephew. 
The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints the 
, corruption of the Papacy in that age re. 
The Pazzi , : ‘ 
conspiracy Mains still to betold. This was the sanc- 
against the tion of the Pazzi Conjuration against Giu- 
Beret liano and Lorenzo de’ Medici. In the year 
1477, the Medici, after excluding the merchant princes 
of the Pazzi family from the magistracy of Florence, and 
otherwise annoying them, had driven Francesco de’ 
Pazzi in disgust to Rome. Sixtus chose him for his 
banker in the place of the Medicean Company. He 
became intimate with Girolamo Riario, and was well 
received at the Papal court. Political reasons at this 
moment made the Pope and his nephew anxious to 
destroy the Medici, who opposed Girolamo’s schemes of 
agerandizement in Lombardy. Private rancor induced 
Francesco de’ Pazzi to second their views, and to stimu- 
late their passion. The three between them hatched 
a plot which was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of 
Pisa, another private foe of the Medici, and by Giam- 
battista Montesecco, a captain well affected to the 
Count Girolamo. The first design of the conspirators 
was to lure the brothers Medici to Rome and to kill 
them there. But the young men were too prudent to 
leave Florence, Pazzi and Salviati then proceeded to 
Tuscany, hoping either at a banquet or in church to 
succeed in murdering them. Bernardo Bandini, a man 
of blood by trade, and Francesco de’ Pazzi were chosen 
to assassinate Giuliano. Giambattista Montesecco 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 61 


andertook to dispose of Lorenzo. April 26, 1478, was 
finally fixed for the deed. The place selected was the 
Duomo. The elevation of the Host at Mass was to be 
the signal, Both the Medici arrived. The murderers 
embraced Giuliano, and discovered that this timid youth 
had left his secret coat of mail at home. But a diffi- 
culty, which ought to have been foreseen, arose. Mon- 
tesecco, cut-throat as he was, refused to stab Lorenzo 
before the high altar; at the last moment some sense of 
the religio foci dashed his courage. Two priests were 
then discovered who had no such silly scruples, In the 
words of an old chronicle: ‘‘ Another man was found, 
who, deing a priest, was more accustomed to the place, 
and therefore less superstitious about its sanctity.” 
This, however, spoiled all. The priests, though more 
sacrilegious than the bravos, were less used to the 
trade of assassination. They failed to strike home. 
Giuliano, it is true, was stabbed to death by Bernardo 
Bandini and Francesco de’ Pazzi at the very moment 
of the elevation of Christ’s body ; but Lorenzo escaped 
with a slight flesh-wound. The whole conspiracy col- 
lapsed. In the retaliation which the infuriated people 
of Florence took upon the murderers, the Archbishop 
Salviati, together with Jacopo and Francesco de’ Pazzi, 
and some others among the principal conspirators, 
were hung from the windows of the Palazzo Publico. 
For this act of violence to the sacred person of a trait- 
orous priest, Sixtus, who had upon his own conscience 
the crime of mingled treason, sacrilege, and murder, 
excommunicated Florence, and carried on for years a 
savage war with the Republic. It was not until 1481, 
when the descent of the Turks upon Otranto made him 
tremble for his own safety, that he chose to make peace 


ates. oe 


62 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


with those whom he had himself provoked and plotted 
against. 

Another feature in the pontificate of Sixtus deserves 
The Inquisi: Special mention. It was under his.auspices,. 
tion inSpain in 1478, that_the..Inquisition-was-founded 


d 
er os in’ Spain_for_ the .extermination..of.. Jews, 


theJews. Moors, and Christians with a taint.of heresy. 
During the next four years 2,000 victims were burned 
in the province of Castile. In Seville, a plot of ground 
called the Quemadero, or place of burning, was set 
apart for executions ; and here, in one year, 280 here- 
tics were committed to the flames, while 79 were con- 
demned to perpetual imprisonment,’ and 17,000 to 
lighter punishments of various kinds. In Andalusia 
alone 5,000 houses were at once abandoned by their 
inhabitants. Then followed, in 1492, the ¢ celebrated 

edict against the Jews.. Before four months had expired, 
the whole Jewish population were bidden to leave 
Spain, carrying with them nothing in the shape of gold 
or silver, Vainly did the persecuted race endeavor 
to purchase a remission of the sentence by the payment 
of anexorbitant ransom, ‘Torquemada appeared before 
Ferdinand and his consort, raising the crucifix, and 
crying: “Judas sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver; 
sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for the same 
to God!”” The exodus began. Eight hundred thou, 
sand Jews left Spain—some for the coast of Africa, 
where the Arabs ripped up their bodies in search for 
gems or gold that they might have swallowed, and 
deflowered their women—some for Portugal, where 
they bought the right to exist for a large head-tax, and 
where they saw their sons and daughters dragged away 
to baptism. Others were sold as slaves, or had te 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 63 


satisfy the rapacity of their persecutors with the bodies 
oftheir children. Many flung themselves into the wells, 
and sought to bury despair in suicide. The Mediter- 
ranean was covered with famine-stricken and plague- 
breeding fleets of exiles. Putting into the port of 
Genoa, they were refused leave to reside in the city, 
and died by hundreds in the harbor. Their festering 
bodies bred a pestilence along the whole Italian sea- 
board, of which, at Naples alone, 20,000 persons died. 
Flitting from shore to shore, these forlorn spectres, the 
victims of bigotry and avarice, everywhere pillaged and 
everywhere rejected, dwindled away and disappeared. 
Most singular is the attitude of a Sixtus—indulging 
his lust and pride in the Vatican, adorning 
the chapel called after his name with master- His religious 
“ R : obliquity. 
pieces, rending Italy with broils for the 
aggrandizement of favorites, haggling over the prices 
to be paid for bishoprics, extorting money from starved 
provinces, plotting murder against his enemies, hound- 
ing the semi-barbarous Swiss mountaineers on Milan by 
indulgences, refusing aid to Venice in her champion- 
ship against the Turk—yet meanwhile thinking to 
please God by holocausts of Moors, by myriads of 
famished Jews, conferring on a faithless and avaricious 
Ferdinand the title of Catholic, endeavoring to wipe 
out his sins by the blood of others, to burn his own 
vices in the autos da fé of Seville, and by the founda- 
tion of that diabolical engine, the Inquisition, to secure 
the fabric his own infamy was undermining. if 
After Sixtus IV came Innocent VIII. His secp- 
lar name was Giambattista Cibo. The Jypnocent 
Sacred College, terrified by the experience VII 
of Sixtus into thinking that another Pope soreckless in 


64 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


his creation of scandalous cardinals might ruin Christen 
dom, laid the most solemn obligations on the Pope 
elect. Cibo took oaths on every relic, by every saint, 
-to every member of the conclave, that he would main- 
“tain a certain order of appointment and a purity of 
election in the Church. No cardinal under the age of 
thirty, not more than one of the Pope’s own blood, 
none without the rank of Doctor of Theology or Law, 
were to be elected, and so forth. But, as soon as the 


tiara was on his head, he renounced them all as incon- , 


sistent with the rights and liberties of S. Peter’s chair, 
Engagements made by the man might always be broken 
by the Pope. 

Of Innocent’s pontificate little need be said. He 

. . was the first Pope publicly to acknowledge 
ri his seven ‘childrén and re eS them sons 
and daughters. “Avarice, venality, sloth, and the as. 
cendency of base favorites made his reign loathsome 
\ without the blaze and splendor of the scandals of his 
\ fiery predecessor. In corruption he advanced a step 
‘even beyond Sixtus, by establishing a bank at Rome 
for the sale of pardons. Each sin had its price, which 
might be paid at the convenience of the criminal; 150 
ducats of the tax were poured into the Papal coffers; 
the surplus fell to Franceschetto, the Pope’s son. 
This insignificant princeling, for whom the county of 
Anguillara was purchased, showed no ability or ambi- 
tion for aught but getting and spending money. He 
was small of stature and tame-spirited; yet the des- 
tinies of an important house of Europe depended on 
him—for his father married him to Maddalena, the 
daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici, in 1487. This lead 
Giovanni de’ Medici receiving a cardinal’s hat at the 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 65 


age of thirteen, and thus the Medicean interest in 
Rome was founded. In the course of a few years the 
Medici gave two Popes to the Holy See, and by their 
ecclesiastical influence riveted the chains of Florence. 

The traffic which Innocent and _ Franceschetto 
carried on in theft and murder filled the 4, ayy 
Campagna with brigands and assassins. effect on the 
Travellers, pilgrims, and even ambassadors Country. 
were stripped and murdered on their way to Rome; 
and in the city itself more than two hundred people 
were publicly assassinated with impunity during the 
last months of the Pope’s life. He was gradually doz- 
ing off into his last long sleep,and Franceschetto was 
planning how to carry off his ducats. While the Holy 
Father still hovered between life and death, a Jewish 
doctor proposed to reinvigorate him by the transfusion 
of young blood into his torpid veins. Three boys 
throbbing with the elixir of early youth were sacrificed 
in vain. Each boy, says Infessura, received one ducat. 
He adds, not without grim humor: “ Et paulo post 
mortui sunt; Judzus quidem aufugit, et Papa non 
servatus est.” The epitaph of this poor old Pope reads 
like a rather clever but blasphemous witticism: “ Ego 
autem in Innocentia med ingressus sum.” 

Meanwhile the cardinals had not been idle. The 
tedious leisure of Innocent’s long lethargy The in- 
was employed by them in active simony. trigues at 
Simony, it may be said in passing, gave the the next Pa- 
~ 3 a8 ; ‘ : pal election. 
great Italian families a direct interest in the 
election of the richest and most paying candidate. It 
served the turn of a man like Ascanio Sforza to fatten 
the golden goose that laid such eggs before he killed 
it—in other words, to take the bribes of Innocent and 

5 


66 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


Alexander, while deferring for a future time his own 
election. All the cardinals, with the exception of 
Roderigo Borgia, the son of Isabella Borgia, niece of 
Pope Calixtus III., were the creatures of Sixtus or of 
Innocent. Having bought their hats with gold, they 
were now disposed to sell their votes to the highest 
bidder. The Borgia was the richest, strongest, and 
most worldly of them all. He ascertained exactly 
what the price of each suffrage would be, and laid his 
plans accordingly. The Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, 
brother of the Duke of Milan, would accept the lucra- 
tive post of vice-chancellor. The Cardinal Orsini 
would be satisfied with the Borgia Palace at Rome and 
the castles of Monticello and Saviano. The Cardinal 
Colonna had a mind for the Abbey of Subbiaco with 
its fortresses. The cardinal of S. Angelo preferred 
the comfortable bishopric of Porto, with its palace 
stocked with choice wines. The cardinal of Parma 
would take Nepi. The cardinal of Genoa was bribable 
with the church of S. Maria in Via Lata. Less in- 
fluential members of the conclave sold themselves for 
gold. The fiery Giuliano della Rovere remained im- 
placable. In the Borgia his vehement temperament 
perceived a fit antagonist. But Roderigo Borgia, 
having corrupted the rest of the college, with the excep- 
tion of five other cardinals, assumed the tiara in 1492 
with the ever-memorable title of Alexander VI. 

In Roderigo Borgia Rome only saw as yet a man 
accomplished at all points, of handsome 
| person, royal carriage, majestic presence, 
and affable address. He was a brilliant orator, a pas- 
sionate lover, a demigod of court pageantry and eccle- 
siastical parade—qualities which, although they do not 


Alexander VI. 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 67 


‘suit our notions of a churchman, imposed upon the 
taste of the Renaissance. As he rode in triumph to- 
wards the Lateran, voices were loud in his praise. 
There is no reason to suppose that the majority of the 
Italians regarded the elevation of the Borgia with any 
concealed sentiments. As a cardinal he had given 
proof of his ability, but shown no signs of fraud or 
cruelty. Nor were his morals worse than those of his 
colleagues. If he was the father of several children, 
so was Giuliano della Rovere, who was to succeed him 
as Julius II., and so had been Pope Innocent before 
him. This mattered but little in an age when the 
Primate of Christendom had come to be regarded as 
a secular potentate, less fortunate than other princes, 
inasmuch as his rule was not hereditary, but more for- 
tunate in so far as he could wield the thunders and 
dispense the privileges of the Church, 
Alexander VI. was a stronger and a firmer man than 
his immediate predecessors. ‘* He com- wis ambi- 
bined,” says Guicciardini, “craft with singu- tious policy. 
lar sagacity, a sound judgment with extraordinary powers 
of persuasion; and to all the grave affairs of life he 
applied ability and pains beyond belief.” His first care 
was to reduce Rome to order. The old factions of Co- 
Jonna and Orsini, which Sixtus had scotched, but which 
had raised their heads again during the dotage of Inno- 
cent, were destroyed in his pontificate. In this way, as 
Machiavelli observed, he laid the real basis for the tem- 
poral power of the Papacy. All considerations of relig- 
jion and morality were subordinated by him with strict 
/ impartiality to policy; and his policy he restrained to 
two objects—the advancement of his family and the 
consolidation of the-temporal-power. ‘These were nar- 


rT 
ae 


aa ee 
ries 


68 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


row aims for the ambition of a potentate who, with one 
stroke of his pen, pretended to confer the new-found 
world on Spain. Yet they taxed his whole strength 
\ and drove him to the perpetration of enormous crimes. 
\. Former Popes had preached crusades against the 
Turk. Alexander frequently invited Bajazet 
| to enter Europe and relieve him of the 
‘princes who opposed his intrigues to favor his children. 
The fraternal feeling which subsisted between the Pope 
and the Sultan was to some extent dependent on the 
fate of Prince Djem, a brother of Bajazet and son of the 
conqueror of Constantinople, who had fled for protec- 
tion to the Christian powers, and whom the Pope kept 
prisoner, receiving 40,000 ducats yearly from the Porte 
for his jail-fee. Innocent VIII. had been the first to 
snare this lucrative guest in 1489. The Lance of 
Longinus was sent him as a token of the Sultan’s grati- 
tude, and Innocent, who built an altar in S. Peter’s for 
the relique, caused his own tomb to be raised close by. 
His effigy in bronze, by Pollajuolo, still carries in its 
hand this blood-gift from the infidel to the High Priest 
of Christendom. Djem meanwhile remained in Rome, 
and held his Moslem court side by side with the Pontiff 
in the Vatican. Despatches are extant in which Alex- 
ander and Bajazet exchanged terms of the warmest 
friendship, the Turk imploring his Greatness—so he 
addressed the Pope—to put an end to the unlucky Djem, 
and promising as the price of this assassination a sum 
of 300,000 ducats and the tunic worn by Christ, pre- 
sumably the very seamless coat over which the soldiers 
on Calvary had cast their dice. The money and the 
relique arrived in Italy, and were intercepted by the 
partizans of Giuliano della Rovere. Alexander, before 


Prince Djem. 


| throughout his life. This, together with his 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 69 


the bargain with the Sultan had been concluded by the 
murder of Djem, was forced to hand him over to the 
French king. But the unlucky Turk died in Charles’s 
camp between Rome and Naples. Whatever crimes 
may be condoned in Alexander, it is difficult to extenuate 
this traffic with the Turks. By his appeal from the 
powers of Europe to the Sultan, at a time when the peril 
to the Western world was still most serious, he stands 
attainted for high treason against Christendom, of which 
he professed to be the chief; against civilization, which 
the Church pretended to protect ; against Christ, whose 
Vicar he presumed to style himself. 

Like Sixtus, Alexander combined this deadness to the 
spirit and interests of Christianity with zeal ai cander’s 
for dogma. He never flinched in formal censorship of 
orthodoxy, and the measures which he took *¢ Press. 
for riveting the chains of superstition on the people were 
calculated with the military firmness of a Napoleon. It 
was he who established the censure of t the press, by which 
printers were obliged, under pain of excommitnication, 
to submit the books they issued to the control of the 
archbishops and their delegates. The Brief of June 1, 
1501, which contains this order, may be reasonably said 
to have retarded civilization, at least in Italy and Spain. 

Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this Pope 
almost insane weakness for his children, ite 
whereby he became a slave to the terrible 
Cesare, caused all the crimes that he committed. At 
the same time, though sensual, he was not gluttonous. 
Boccaccio, the Ferrarese ambassador, remarks: “ The 
Pope eats only of one dish. It is, therefore, disagree- 
able to have to dine with him.” Inthis respect he may 


70 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


be favorably contrasted with the Roman prelates of the 
age of Leo. His relations to Vannozza Catanei, the 
titular wife first of Giorgio de Croce and then of Carlo 
Canale, and to Julia Farnese, surnamed La Bella, the 
titular wife of Orsino Orsini, were open and acknowl- 
edged. These two sultans ruled him during the greater 
portion of his career, conniving meanwhile at the harem, 
which, after truly Oriental fashion, he maintained in the 
Vatican. 

The nepotism of Sixtus was like water to the strong 
Hisnepo- | Wine of Alexander’s paternalambition. Of 
tism. his children by Vannozza, he caused the 
eldest son to be created Duke of Gandia ; the youngest 
he married to Donna Sancia, a daughter of Alfonso of 
Aragon, by whom the boy was honored with the duke- 
dom of Squillace. Cesare, the second of the family, 
was appointed Bishop of Valentia and cardinal. The 
dukedoms of Nepi and Camerino were given to another 
son, John, whom he first declared to be his grandson 
through Cesare. This John may possibly have been 
Lucrezia’s bastard son. The dukedom of Sermoneta, 
wrenched for a moment from the hands of the Gaetani 
family, who still own it, was conferred upon Lucrezia’s 
son, Roderigo. Lucrezia, the only daughter of Alex- 
ander, by Vannozza, took three husbands in succession, 
after having been formally betrothed to two Spanish 
nobles. She was finally married to Alfonso, crown 
prince of Ferrara, in 1502; and whatever may have 
been her earlier faults, owing to the foul atmosphere in 
which she had been reared, it is due to truth to record 
that at Ferrara she won the esteem of a husband who 
had married her unwillingly, attached the whole state 
to her by her sweetness of temper, and received the 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 71 


panegyrics of the two Strozzi, Bembo, Ariosto, Aldo 
Manuzio, and many other men of note. Like her mother, 
Vannozza, she gave herself, in the decline of life, to 
works of charity and mercy. 

Alexander was now to receive a wound on the ten- 
derest side of his character. The murder a tas 
of the Duke of Gandia is related with ofthe puke 
great circumstantiality and with surprising of Gandia. 
sangfroiW by Burchard, the Pope’s master of the cere- 
monies, The duke, with his brother Cesare, then Car- 
dinal Valentino, supped one night at the house of their 
mother, Vannozza. On their way home the duke joined 
company with a masked stranger, dismissed his only 
attendant, and was never seen again alive. His 
servant was attacked and half murdered. When the 
news of the duke’s disappearance spread abroad, a 
boatman of the Tiber deposed to having seen the body 
of a man thrown into the river on the night of the 
duke’s death, June 14, but he had not thought it worth 
while to report the circumstance, as he had seen “a 
hundred bodies thrown into the water at the same spot, 
and no questions asked about them afterwards.” The 
Pope had the Tiber dragged for some hours, while the 
wits of Rome made epigrams upon this true successor 
of S. Peter, this new fisher of men. At last the body 
of the Duke of Gandia was hauled up. Nine wounds— 
one in the throat, the others in the head, the legs, and 
the trunk—were found upon the corpse. Whether 
the real perpetrators of this murder were ever discov- 
ered isnot known. In the absence of official declara- 
tions on the subject, and in the dead silence of judicial 
authority which followed, the public surmised that 
Cesare had planned it; whether, as some have sup- 


72 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


posed, out of a jealousy of his brother, or because he 
wished to take the first place in the Borgia family, can 
never be known. The Pontiff in his rage and grief 
was like a wild beast at bay. He shut himself ina 
private room, refused food, and howled with so terrible 
a voice that it was heard in the streets beyond the 
palace. When he rose up from this agony, remorse 
seemed to have struck him. He assembled a conclave 
of the cardinals, wept before them, rent his robes, con- 
fessed his sins and instituted a commission for the 
reform of the abuses he had sanctioned in the Church, 
But the storm of anguish spent its strength at last. A 
visit from Vannozza, the mother of his children, wrought 
a sudden change from fury to reconcilement. What 
passed between them is not known for certain. Van- — 
nozza is supposed, however, to have pointed out, what 
was indisputably true, that Cesare was more fitted to 
support the dignity of the family by his abilities than 
had been the weak and amiable Duke of Gandia. The 
miserable father rose from the earth, dried his eyes, 
took food, put from him his remorse, and forgot, to- 
gether with his grief for Absalom, the reforms which 
he had promised for the Church. 

Henceforth he devoted himself with sustained energy 
Gatate to building up the fortunes of Cesare, 
Borgia. whom he released from all ecclesiastical 
obligations, and to whose service he seemed bound by 
some mysterious power. Nor did he even resent the 
savageness and cruelty which this young hell-cat 
vented in his presence on the persons of his favo- 
rites. At one time Cesare stabbed Perotto, the 
Pope’s minion, with his own hand, when the youth had 
taken refuge in Alexander’s arms; the blood spurted 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 73 


out upon the priestly mantle, and the young man died 
there. At another time he employed the same diabol- 
‘ical temper for the delectation of his father. He 
turned out some prisoners sentenced to death in a 
courtyard of the palace, arrayed himself in fantastic 
clothes, and amused the Papal party by shooting the 
unlucky criminals. .They ran round and round the 
court, crouching and doubling to avoid his arrows, 
He showed his skill by hitting each where he thought 
fit. The Pope and Lucrezia looked on applaudingly. 
Other scenes, not of bloodshed, but of grovelling sen- 
suality, devised for the entertainment of his father and 
his sister, though described by the dry pen of Burchard, 
can scarcely be transferred to these pages. 

The vision of an Italian sovereignty which Charles 
of Anjou, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and »,, feces 
Galeazzo Maria Sforza had successively of Alexan- 
entertained, now fascinated the imagina- “t's con- 

: ‘ ; quests. 
tion of the Borgias. Having resolved to make 

Cesare a prince, Alexander allied himself to Louis XII. 
of France, promising to annul his first marriage and 
to sanction his nuptials with Ann of Brittany, if 
he would undertake the advancement of his son. 
The bribe induced Louis to create Cesare Duke of 
Valence, and to confer on him the hand of Charlotte 
of Navarre. He also entered Italy, and with his arms 
enabled Cesare to subdue Romagna. The system 
adopted by Alexander and his son in their conquests 
was a simple one. They took the capitals and mur- 
dered the princes. Thus Cesare strangled the Varani 
at Camerino in 1502, and the Vitelli and Orsini at 
Sinigaglia in the same year. By his means the Mar. 
escotti had been massacred wholesale in Bologna; 


74 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


Pesaro, Rimini, and Forli had been treated in like 
manner; and after the capture of Faenza in 1501, its 
lord, Astone Manfredi, with his brother Ottaviano were 
sent to Rome, where they were exposed to the worst 
insults, strangled, and their bodies thrown into the 
Tiber. A system of equal simplicity kept their policy 
alive in foreign courts. The Bishop of Cette, in 
France, was poisoned for hinting ata secret of Cesare’s 
(1498); the Cardinal d’Amboise was bribed to maintain 
the credit of the Borgias with Louis XII.; the offer of 
a red hat to Brigonnet during the invasion of Charles 
VIII. saved Alexander from the terrors of a General 
Council in 1494, as we shall subsequently see. 

The historical interest of Alexander’s method con- 
The promo- sists in his deliberate use of all the means 
Paes “e in his power to one end—the elevation 
sole con- of his family. His spiritual authority, the 
sideration, wealth of the Church, the honors of the 
Holy College, the arts of an assassin, the diplomacy 
of a despot, were all devoted systematically and openly 
to the purpose in view. Whatever could be done to 
weaken Italy by foreign invasions and internal dis-. 
cords, so as to render ita prey to his poisondas oe 
he attempted. When Louis XII. made his infamous 
alliance with Ferdinand the Catholic for the spoliation 
of the house of Aragon in Naples, the Pope gladly gave 
it his sanction, The two monarchs quarrelled over 
their prey; then Alexander fomented their discord in 
order that Cesare might have an opportunity of carry- 
ing on his operations in Tuscany unchecked. Patriot- 
ism in his breast—whether the. patriotism of a born 
Spaniard or the patriotism of an Italian potentate—was 
as dead as Christianity. To make profit for the house 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 75 


p 


/ of Borgia by fraud, sacrilege, and the dismemberment 
of nations was the Papal policy. 

It is a relief to come at last to the end of this cata- 
logue of crime. The two Borgias—so runs _ 
the legend—invited themselves to dine with eke io 
the Cardinal Adriano of Corneto in a vine- 
yard of the Vatican belonging to their host. Thither, 
by the hands of Alexander’s butler, they had previously 

forwarded some poisoned wine. By mistake, or by 

contrivance of the cardinal, who may have bribed the 
trusted agent, they drank the death-cup mingled for 
their victim. Nearly all contemporary Italian annalists, 
including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio, and Sanudo, gave 
currency to this version of the tragedy, which became 
the common property of historians, novelists, and mor- 
alists. Yet Burchard, who was on the spot, recorded 
in his diary that both father and son were attacked by 
a malignant fever; and Giustiniani wrote to his mas- 
ters in Venice that the Pope’s physician ascribed his 
illness to apoplexy. The season was remarkably un- 
healthy, and deaths from fever had been frequent. A 
circular letter to the German princes, written probably 
by the Cardinal of Gurk, and dated August 31, 1503, 
distinctly mentioned fever as the cause of the Pope’s 
sudden decease. Machiavelli, again, who conversed 
with Cesare Borgia about this turning-point in his 
career, gave no hint of poison, but spoke only of son 
and father being simultaneously prostrated by disease. 

Whatever may have been the proximate cause of 
his sickness, Alexander died, a black and ay, yetiog 
swollen mass, hideous to contemplate. that it 
«“ All Rome,” says Guicciardini, “ran with used. 
indescribable gladness to view the corpse. Men could 


96 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE 


not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of the 
serpent who, by his unbounded ambition and pestifer- 
ous perfidy, by every demonstration of horrible cruelty, 
monstrous lust, and unheard-of avarice, selling without 
distinction things sacred and profane, had filled the 
world with venom.” Cesare languished for some 
days on a sick-bed; but in the end, by the aid of 
a powerful constitution, he recovered, to find his 
claws cut and his plans in irretrievable confusion. 
“The state of the Duke of Valence,” says Filippo 
Nerli, “vanished even as smoke in air, or foam 
upon the water.” Thus overreaching themselves 
ended this pair of adventurers, the most notable two 
who ever played their part upon the stage of the 
great world. The fruit of so many crimes and such 
persistent effort was reaped by their enemy, Giuliano 
della Rovere, for whose benefit the nobles of the 
Roman state and the despots of Romagna had been 
extirpated. | 

Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alex- 
ander, no account need be taken. Giuliano 
| della Rovere was made Pope in 1503. 

Whatever opinion may be formed of him, considered as 
the high-priest of the Christian faith, there can be no 
doubt that Julius II. was one of the greatest figures of the 
‘Renaissance, and that his name, instead of Leo X., 
should by right be given to the golden age of letters and 
of artsin Rome. He stamped the century with the im- 
pression of a powerful personality. Itis to him we owe 
jthe most splendid of Michael Angelo’s and Raphael’s’ 
‘masterpieces. The Basilica of S. Peter’s—that mate- 
rialized idea which remains to symbolize the transition 
from the Church of the Middle Ages to the modern 


i: A ulins II. 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 79 


semi-secular supremacy of Papal Rome—was his 
thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no 
flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice, stains his 
pontificate. His one purpose was to secure and extend 
the temporal authority of the Popes; and this he 
achieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians, who 
threatened to absorb Romagna, by reducing Perugia and 
Bologna to the Papal sway, by annexing Parma and 
Piagenza, and by entering on the heritage bequeathed 
to him by Cesare Borgia. 

At his death he transmitted to his successors the 
largest and most solid sovereignty in Italy. ia woe 
But restless, turbid, never happy unless ofthe 
fighting, Julius drowned the peninsula in Church 

; advanced at 
blood. He hasbeen called a patriot, because the expense 
from time to time he raised the cry of driv- of the 
ing the barbarians from Italy. It must, how- att f 
ever, be remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal 
of San Pietro in Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. 
from Lyons; it was he who stirred up the League of 
Cambray against Venice, and who invited the Swiss mer- 
cenaries into Lombardy, in each case adding the weight 
of the Papal authority to the forces which were enslav- 
ing his country. Julius, again, has been variously 
represented as the saviour of the Papacy and as the 
curse of Italy. He was emphatically both. In those 
days of national anarchy it was perhaps impossible for 
Julius to magnify the Church except at the expense of 
the nation, and to achieve the purpose of his life with- 
out inflicting the scourge of foreign war upon his country- 
men. The Powers of Europe had outgrown the Papal 
discipline. Italian questions were being decided in the 
cabinets of Louis, Maximilian, and Ferdinand. Instead 


78 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


of controlling the arbiters of Italy, a Pope could only 
play off one against another. 

Leo X. succeeded Julius in 1513, to the great relief 
of the Romans, wearied with the continual 
warfare of the Pontifice terribile. In the gor- 

_feous pageant of his triumphal procession to the Lateran, 
the streets were decked with arches, emblems, and 


Leo x, 


inscriptions. ‘This first Pope of the house of Medici 


enjoyed at Rome the fame of his father, Lorenzo the 
Magnificent, at Florence. Extolled as an Augustus in 
his lifetime, he has given his name to what is called 
the golden age of Italian culture. As a man he doar 
well qualified to represent the neo-pagan freedom of | 


the Renaissance. Saturated with the spirit of il 
period, he had no sympathy with religious earnest- — 


ness, no conception of moral elevation, no aim be- 
yond a superficial polish of the understanding and 
the taste. Good Latinity seemed to him of more 


ew as 


importance than true doctrine. At the same time — 


he was extravagantly munificent to men of culture, 


and hearty in his zeal for the diffusion of liberal — 
knowledge. But what was reasonable in the man — 
was ridiculous in the Pontiff. There remained an - 


irreconcilable incongruity between his profession of 
the Primacy of Christendom and his easy epicurean 
philosophy. 


Leo, like all the Medici after the first Cosimo, was\. 


a bad financier. His reckless expenditure 
His extrava- contributed in no small measure to the 
ee corruption of Rome and to the ruin of 
the Latin Church, while it won the praises of the 
literary world. His table, which was open to all the 
poets, singers, scholars, and buffoons of Rome, cost 


we 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 79 


half the revenues of Romagna and the March. He 
founded the knightly order of S. Peter to replenish his 
‘treasury, and turned the conspiracy of the Cardinal 
Petrucci against his life to such good account— 
extorting from the Cardinal Riario 150,000 ducats, 
and from the Cardinals Soderini and Hadrian the 
sum of 125,o0oo—that Von Hutten was almost jus- 
tified in treating the whole of that dark business as 


a mere financial speculation. The creation of thirty- 


nine cardinals in 1517 brought him in above s00,000 
ducats. Yet, in spite of these expedients for get- 
ting gold, the bankers of Rome were half ruined 
when he died, owing to the large amount he owed 
them. 
When Leo was made Pope he said to Giuliano, Duke 
of Nemours, “Let us enjoy the Papacy, 
since God has given it us.” It was in this His sump- - 
3 i tuous mode 
spirit that he administered the Holy See. of tife, 
The key-note which he struck dominated 
the whole society of Rome. Masques and balls, com- 
edies and carnival processions, filled the streets and 
palaces of the Eternal City with a mimicry of pagan 
festivals, while Art went hand in hand with Luxury. 
The hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the 
drone of fifferari from the Ara Ceeli, mingled with the 


Latin declamations of the Capitol and the twang of lute- \ 
strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile, amid crowds of | 
cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, | 


and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims 
from the north with wide, astonished, woeful eyes— 
disciples of Luther, in whose soul, as in a scabbard, lay 
sheathed the sword of the Spirit, ready to flash forth 
and smite. 


5 { 


80 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


A more complete conception may be formed of 
Leo by comparing him with Julius. Julius 
ed a disturbed the peace of Italy with a view to 
IL. establishing the temporal power of the See. 
Leo returned to the old nepotism of the 
previous Popes and fomented discord for the sake of 
the Medici. Julius was violent in temper but observant 
of his promises. Leo was suave and slippery. He 
lured Gianpaolo Baglioni to Rome by a safe-conduct, 
and then had him imprisoned and beheaded in the 
castle of S. Angelo. Julius delighted in war, and was 
never happier than when the cannons roared around 
him at Mirandola. Leo vexed the soul of his master 
of the ceremonies because he would ride out a-hunting 
in top-boots. Julius designed S. Peter’s and compre- 
hended Michael Angelo. Leo had the wit to patronize 
the poets, artists, and historians who added lustre to 
his court, but he brought nonew great man of genius 
to the front. The portraits of the two Popes, both 
from the hand of Raphael, are exceedingly character- 
istic. Julius, bent and emaciated, has the nervous 
glance of a passionate and energetic temperament, 
Leo, heavy-jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips anda brawny 
jowl, betrays the coarser fibre of a sensualist.: 
It has often been remarked that both Julius and Leo 
raised money by the sale of indulgences with 
/Without a view to the building of S. Peter’s, thus 
Pha Rote aggravating one of the chief scandals which 
ormation. provoked the Reformation. In that age 
of maladjusted impulses the desire to ex- 
ecute a great work of art, combined with the cynical 
resolve to turn the superstitions of the people to ac- 
count, forced rebellion toa head. Leo was unconscious 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 81 


| of the magnitude of Luther’s movement. If he thought 


| 
} 


| 


at all seriously of the phenomenon, it stirred his wonder, 


Nor did he feel the necessity of reformation in the 


Church of Italy. The rich and many-sided life of 


_ Rome, and the diplomatic interest of Italian despotism, 
absorbed his whole attention. It was but a small 
‘matter what barbarians thought and did. 


The sudden death of Leo threw the Holy College 

into great perplexity. To choose the new i 
‘ ny ‘ The diffi- 

Pope without reference to political interests guity of 
was impossible; and these were divided be- choosing a 
tween Charles V. the Emperor and Francis *™°°°#8 
I. of France. After twelve days spent by the cardinals 
in conclave, the result of their innumerable schemes 
and counter-schemes was the election of the Cardinal 
of Tortosa. Noone knew him; and his elevation to 
the Papacy, due to the influence of Charles, was almost 
as great a surprise to the electorsas to the Romans. In 
their rage and horror at having chosen this barbarian, 
the College began to talk about the inspiration of the 
Holy Ghost, seeking the most improbable of all excuses 
for the mistake to which intrigue had driven them. 

Adrian VI..came to Rome for the first time as Pope. 
He knew no Italian, and talked Latin with 
an accent unfamiliar to southern ears. 
His studies had been confined to scholastic phi 
losophy and theology. With courts he had no com- 
merce; and he was so ignorant of the state a Pope 
should keep in Rome that he wrote beforehand request- 
ing that a modest house and garden might be hired for 
his abode. When he saw the Vatican, he exclaimed 
that here the successors, not of Peter, but of Constan- 
tine sa dwell. Leo kept one hundred grooms for 


Adrian VL 


82 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


the service of his stable; Adrian retained but four, 
Two Flemish valets sufficed for his personal attend- 
ance, and to these he gave each evening one ducat for 
the expenses of the next day’s living. A Flemish serv- 
ing-woman cooked his food, made his bed, and washed 
his linen. Rome, with its splendid immorality, its 
classic art and pagan culture, made the same impres- 
sion on him that it made on Luther. When his cour- 
tiers pointed to the Laocoon as the most illustrious 
monument of ancient sculpture, he turned away with 
horror, murmuring: ‘Idols of the pagans!” The Bel- 
vedere, which was fast becoming the first statue-gallery 
in Europe, he walled up and never entered. At the 
same time he set himself with earnest purpose, so far 
as his tied hands and limited ability would go, to re- 
form the more patent abuses of the Church. Leo 
had raised about three million ducats by the sale of 
offices; by a stroke of his pen Adrian cancelled these 
contracts, and threw upon the world a crowd of angry 
and defrauded officials. It was but poor justice to 
remind them that their bargain with his predecessor 
had been illegal. Such attempts, however, at a refor- 
mation of ecclesiastical society were as ineffectual as 
pin-pricks in the cure of a fever which demands blood- 
letting. The real corruption of Rome, deeply seated 
in high places remained untouched. Luther mean- 
while had carried all before him in the north, and ac- 
curate observers in Rome itself dreaded some awful 
catastrophe for the guilty city. 
' Great was the rejoicing when another Medici was 
made Pope in 1523. People hoped that 
| at phthe meine i: hee ait ee But 
\ things had gone too far forward towards dissolution. 


THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 33 


Clement VII. failed to give satisfaction to the courtiers 
whom his more genial cousin had delighted: even tha 
scholars and the poets grumbled. His rule was weak 
and vacillating, so that the Colonna faction raised its 
head again and drove him to the castle of S. Angelo. 
The political horizon of Italy grew darker and more 
sullen daily, as before some dreadful storm, At last 
the crash came. Clement, by a series of treaties, 
treacheries, and tergiversations, had deprived himself 
of every friend and exasperated every foe. Italy was. 
so worn out with warfare, so accustomed to the anarchy 
of aimless revolution and to the trampling to and fro 
of stranger squadrons on her soil, that the news of a 
Lutheran troop, levied with the express object of pil- 
laging Rome, and reinforced with Spanish ruffians and 
the scum of every nation, scarcely roused his apathy. 
The so-called army of Frundsberg—a horde of robbers 
held together by the hope of plunder—marched with- 
out difficulty to the gates of Rome. So low had the 
honor of Italian princes fallen that the Duke of Fer- 
rara, by direct aid given, and the Duke of Urbino, 
by counter-force withheld, opened the passes of the Po 
and of the Apennines to these marauders. They lost 
their general in Lombardy. The Constable Bourbon, 
who succeeded him, died in the assault of the city. The 
troops and inhabitants of Rome showed the utmost 
pusillanimity. Thus the city for nine months was 
abandoned to the lust, rapacity, and cruelty of some 
30,000 brigands without a leader. It was then shown 
to what lengths of insult, violence, and bestiality the 
brutal barbarism of Germans and the avarice of 
Spaniards could be carried. Clement, beleaguered in 
the castle of S. Angelo, saw, day and night, the smoke 


84 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 


ascend from desulated palaces and desecrated temples, 
heard the wailing of women and the groans of tortured 
men mingle with the jests of Lutheran drunkards and 
the curses of Castilian bandits. Roaming its galleries, 
and looking with hopeless eyes upon so much misery 
and shame, he was wont to exclaim with Job: ‘“ Where- 
fore hast thou brought me forth from the womb? Oh, 
that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen 
me.” What the Romans, emasculated by luxury and 
priest rule—what the cardinals and prelates, lapped in 
sensuality and sloth—were made to suffer during this 
long agony can scarcely be described. When at last 
the barbarians, sated with blood, surfeited with lechery, 
glutted with gold, and decimated with pestilence, with- 
drew, Rome raised herhead awidow. From the shame 
and torment of that sack she never recovered—never 
again became the gay, licentious capital of arts and 
letters—the glittering, extravagant Rome of Leo X. 


V. 
SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


OTHING is more characteristic of the sharp 
contrasts of the Italian Renaissance than the 
emergence, not only from the same society, but also 
‘from the bosom of the same Church, of two men so 
diverse as the Pope Alexander VI. and the monk 
Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola has been claimed 
as a precursor of the Lutheran reformers, and as an 
inspired exponent of the spirit of the fifteenth century. 
In reality he neither shared the revolutionary genius 
of Luther, which gave a new vitality to the faiths of 
Christendom, nor did he sympathize with that free 
movement of the modern mind which found its first 
expression in the arts and humanistic studies of 
renaissant Italy. Both towards Renaissance and Re- 
form he preserved the attitude of a monk, showing, on 
the one hand, an austere mistrust of pagan culture, 
and, on the other, no desire to alter either the creeds or 
the traditions of the Romish Church. Yet the history 
of Savonarola is not to be dissociated from that of the 
Italian Renaissance. He, more clearly than any other 
man, discerned the moral and political situation of his 
country. When all the states of Italy seemed sunk in 
peace and cradled in prosperity, he predicted war 
and felt the imminence of overwhelming calamity. 


86 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


The purification of customs which he preached was 
demanded by the flagrant vices of the Popes and by 
the wickedness of the tyrants. The whirlwind which 
he prophesied did in fact descend upon Italy. In 
addition to this clairvoyance, by right of which we call 
him Seer, the hold he took on Florence at a critical 
moment of Italian history is alone enough to entitle 
him to more than passing notice. 

Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara in 1452. 
His early life His grandfather Michele, a Paduan of 
at Ferrara. noble family, had removed to the capital of 
the Este princes at the beginning of the fifteenth 
century. There he held the office of court physician; 
and Girolamo was intended for the same profession. 
But early in his boyhood the future prophet showed 
signs of disinclination for a worldly life, and an invincible 
dislike of the court. Under the house of Este, Ferrara 
was famous throughout Italy for its gaiety and 
splendor. No city enjoyed more brilliant and more 
Irequent public shows. Nowhere did the aristocracy 
maintain so much of feudal magnificence and chivalrous 
enjoyment. The square castle of red brick, which still 
stands in the middle of the town, was thronged with 
poets, players, fools who enjoyed an almost European 
reputation, court flatterers, knights, pages, scholars, and 
fair iadies. But beneath its cube of solid masonry, on a 
level with the moat, shut out from daylight bya seven- 
fold series of iron bars, lay dungeons in which the 
objects of the duke’s displeasure clanked chains and 
sighed their lives away. Within the precincts of this 
palace the young Savonarola learned to hate alike the 
worldly vices and the despotic cruelty against which 
in after-life he declaimed and fought unto the death. 


SAVONAROLA;: SCOURGE AND SEER. 37 


Of his boyhood we know but little. His biographers 
only tell us that he was grave and soli- 
tary, frequenting churches, praying with arid 
passionate persistence, obstinately refusing, 
though otherwise docile, to join his father in his 
visits to the court. Aristotle and S. Thomas Aquinas 
seem to have been the favorite masters of his study. 
In fact, he refused the new lights of the humanists, 
and adhered to the ecclesiastical training of the 
schoolmen. 

The attractions of the cloister, as a refuge from 
the storms of the world, and as a rest 
from the torments of the sins of others, now His thoughts 
began to sway his mind. But he communi- bral life. 
cated his desire to no one. It would 
have grieved his father and mother to find that their 
son, who was, they hoped, to be a shining light at the 
court of Ferrara, had determined to assume the cowl. 
At length, however, came the time at which he felt 
that leave the world he must. “It was on April 23, 
1475,” says Villari, “he was sitting with his lute, and 
playing a sad melody; his mother, as if moved bya 
spirit of divination, turned suddenly round to him and 
exclaimed mournfully: ‘ My son, that is a sign we are 
soon to part.’ He roused himself and continued, but 
with a trembling hand,to touch the strings of the lute 
without raising his eyes from the ground.” This would 
make a picture: spring twilight in the quaint Italian 
room, with perhaps a branch of fig-tree or of bay across 
the open window; the mother looking up with anxious 
face from her needlework; the youth with those terrible 
eyes and tense lips and dilated nostrils of the future 
prophet, not yet worn by years of care but strongly 


88 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


marked and unmistakable, bending over the melancholy 
chords of the lute, dressed almost for the last time in 
secular attire. 

On the very next day Girolamo left Ferrara in 
Entersthe s°cret and journeyed to Bologna. There 
Order of§, he entered the order of S. Dominic, the 
Dominicat order of the Preachers, the order of his 
Bologaa, master S. Thomas—the order, too, let us re- 
member, of inquisitorial crusades. The letter written to 
his father, after taking this step, is memorable, In it he 
says: “The motives by which I have been led to enter 
into a religious life are these: the great misery of the 
world; the iniquities of men, their rapes, adulteries, 
robberies, their pride, idolatry, and fearful blasphe- 
mies, so that things have come to such a pass that 
no one can be found acting righteously. Many times 
a day have I repeated with tears the verse : 


Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum | 


I could not endure the enormous wickedness of the 
blinded people of Italy; and the more so because I 
saw everywhere virtue despised and vice honored.” 
We see clearly that Savonarola’s vocation took its 
origin in a deep sense of the wickedness of the world. 
It was the same spirit as that which drove the early 
Christians of Alexandria into the Thebaid, Austere 
and haggard, consumed with the zeal of the Lord, he 
had moved long enough among the Ferrarese holiday- 
makers. Those elegant young men in tight hose and 
parti-colored jackets, with oaths upon their lips, and 
deeds of violence and lust within their hearts, were no 
associates for him. It is touching, however, to note 
that no text of Ezekiel or Jeremiah, but Virgil’s musi- 


SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 89 


eal hexameter, sounded through his soul the warning 
to depart. 

The career of Savonarola as a preacher began in 
1482, when he was first sent to Ferrara and yy, jissions 
then to Florence on missions for his supe- to Ferrara 
riors. But at neither place did he find ac- 924 Florence. 
ceptance. A prophet has no honor in his own country ; 
and for pagan-hearted Florence, though destined to be 
the theatre of his life-drama, Savonarola had as yet no 
thunderous burden of invective to utter. Besides, his 
voice was sharp and thin ; his face and person were not 
prepossessing. The style of his discourse was adapted 
to cloistral disputations, and overloaded with scholastic 
distinctions. The great orator had not yet arisen in him. 
The friar, with all his dryness and severity, was but too 
apparent. 

In the cloisters of San Marco, enriched with splendid 
libraries by the liberality of the Medicean 4y;, grep 
princes, he was at peace. The walls of residencein 
that monastery had recently been decorated 5: Maree. 
with frescoes of Fra Angelico. Among these Savona- 
rola meditated and was happy. But in the pulpit, and 
in contact with the holiday-folk of Florence, he was ill 
at ease. Lorenzo de’ Medici overshadowed the whole 
city. Lorenzo, in whom the pagan spirit of the Renais- 
sance, the spirit of free culture, found a proper incar- 
nation, was the very opposite of Savonarola, who had 
already judged the classical revival by its fruits, and 
had conceived a spiritual resurrection for his country. 

The young Savonarola was as yet no match for Lo 
renzo, And whither could he look for Thapar 
help? The reform of morals he so ardent- ciated by 
ly desired was not to be expected from the Lorenzo. 


go SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


Church, Florence well knew that Sixtus had planned to 
murder the Medici before the altar at the moment of the 
elevation of the Host. Excommunicated for the act of 
justice which we have related, the city had long been 
at war with the Pontiff. Savonarola and Lorenzo 
were opposed as champions of two hostile principles 
alike emergent from the very life of the Renaissance : 
paganism reborn in the one, the spirit of the Gospel in 
the other. Both were essentially modern; for it was 
the function of the Renaissance to restore to the soul 
of man its double heritage of the classic past and 
Christian liberty, freeing it from the fetters which the 
Middle Ages had forged. Not yet, however, were 
Lorenzo and Savonarola destined to clash. The ob- 
scure friar at this time was preaching to an audience 
of some thirty persons in San Lorenzo, while Poliziano 
and all the fashion of the town crowded to the sermons 
of Fra Mariano da Genezzano in Santo Spirito. This 
man flattered the taste of the moment by composing 
orations on the model of Ficino’s addresses to the 
Academy, and by complimenting Christianity upon its 
similarity to Platonism. Who could then have guessed 
that beneath the cowl of the harsh-voiced Dominican, 
his rival, burned thoughts that in a few years would 
inflame Florence with a conflagration powerful enough 
to destroy the fabric of the Medicean despotism? 
From Florence, where he had met with no success, 
Savonarola was sent to San Gemignano, a 
At Sher little town on the top of a high hill between 
ate Florence and Siena. We now visit San 
Gemignano in order to study some fading frescoes of 
Gozzoli and Ghirlandajo, or else for the sake of its 
strange feudal towers, tall pillars of brown stone, 


SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. gt 


crowded together within the narrow circle of the town 
walls. But not yet had he fully entered on his voca- 
tion. His voice was weak; his style uncertain; his 
soul, we may believe, still wavering between strange 
dread and awful joy, as he beheld the mantle of the 
prophets descend upon him. 

The flame which began to smoulder in him at San 
Gemignano burst forth into a blaze at 
Brescia in 1486. Savonarola was now aged 
thirty-four. ‘“‘ Midway upon the path of life” 
he opened the Book of Revelation; he figured to the 
people of Brescia the four-and-twenty elders rising to 
denounce the sins of Italy, and to declare the calam- 
ities that must ensue. He pictured to them their city 
flowing with blood, His voice, which now became the 
interpreter of his soul in its resonance and earnestness, 
in its piercing shrillness, thrilled his hearers with 
strange terror. Already they believed his prophecy ; 
and twenty-six years later, when the soldiers of Gaston 
de Foix slaughtered six thousand souls in the streets 
of Brescia, her citizens recalled the Apocalyptic warn- 
ings of the Dominican monk. 

After leaving Brescia he moved to Reggio, where he 
made the friendship of the famous Giovanni 
Pico della Mirandola. They continued in- Recalled to 

: . ‘ Florence by 
timate till the death of the latter in 14943 Lorenzo, 

it was his nephew, Giovanni Francesco 

Pico della Mirandola, who afterwards wrote the life of 
Savonarola. From Reggio the friar went to Genoa; 
and by this time his fame as a prophet in the north of 
Lombardy was well established. Now came the turn- 
ing-point of his life. Lorenzo de’ Medici, strangely 
enough, was the instrument of his recall to Florence. 


His success 
at Brescia. 


92 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


Lorenzo, who, if he could have foreseen the future of 
his own family in Florence, would rather have stifled 
this monk’s voice in his cowl, took pains to send for 
him and bring him to S. Mark’s, the monastery upon 
which his father had lavished so much wealth. He 
hoped to add lustre to his capital by the preaching of 
the most eloquent friar in Italy. Clear-sighted as he 
was, he could not discern the flame of liberty which 
burned in Savonarola’s soul. On August 1, 1490, the 
monk ascended the pulpit of S. Mark’s and delivered 
a tremendous sermon on a passage from the Apocalypse. 
On the eve of this commencement he is reported to 
have said: “Tomorrow I shall begin to preach, and I 
shall preach for eight years.” The Florentines were 
greatly moved. Savonarola had to remove from the 
church of S. Mark to the Duomo; and thus began the 
spiritual dictatorship which he exercised thenceforth 
without intermission till his death. 
“IT began,” Savonarola writes himself with reference 
j _ to acourse of sermons delivered in 1491— 
pad bai ‘*T began publicly to expound the Revela- 
tion in our Church of S. Mark. During 
the course of the year I continued to develop to the 
Florentines these three propositions: That the Church 
would be renewed in our time: that before that reno- 
vation God would strike all Italy with a fearful chas- 
tisement: that these things would happen shortly.” 
He was no apostle of reform. It did not occur to him 
to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the discipline, or to 
criticise the authority of the Church. He was no 
founder of a new order. Unlike his predecessors, 
Dominic and Francis, he never attempted to organize a 
society of saints or preachers- Wnlike his successors, 


SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 93 


Caraffa the Theatine and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled 
no militia for the defence of the faith, constructed no 
machinery for education. Starting with simple horror at 
the wickedness of the world, he had recourse to the old 
prophets. He caught the inspiration and the language 
of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became convinced that 
for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was imminent. 
There are materials which serve to give us some idea 
of Savonarola’s appearance and style of 
preaching at this time. Fra Bartolommeo, 
one of his followers, painted a profile of 
him in the character of S. Peter Martyr. This shows 
all the benignity and grace of expression which his 
stern lineaments could assume. But the noblest por- 
trait is an intaglio engraved by Giovanni della Corniole, 
now to be seen in the Uffizi at Florence. Of this work 
Michael Angelo, himself a disciple of Savonarola, said 
that art could go no further. A thick hood covers the 
whole head and shoulders. Beneath it can be traced 
the curve of a long and somewhat flat skull, rounded 
into extraordinary fulness at the base and side. From 
a deeply sunken eye-socket emerges, scarcely seen, 
but powerfully felt, the eye that blazed with lightning. 
The nose is strong, prominent, and aquiline, with wide 
nostrils capable of terrible dilation under the stress of 
vehement emotion. The mouth has full, compressed, 
projecting lips. It is large, as if made for a torrent of 
eloquence ; it is supplied with massive muscles, as if to 
move with energy and calculated force. The jawbone 
is hard and heavy, the cheekbone emergent: between 
the two the flesh is hollowed. The face on the whole 
is ugly, but not repellent; and, in spite of its great 
strength, it shows signs of feminine sensibility. 


His personal 
appearance, 


94 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


Savonarola was a visionary and a monk. The dis 
cipline of the cloister left its trace upon him. 
Yet, from the midst of profound debility, 
so that he could scarcely crawl up the pulpit 
steps, he would pass suddenly into the plenitude of 
power, filling the Dome of Florence with denunciations, 
sustaining his discourse by no mere trick of rhetoric 
that flows to waste upon the lips of shallow preachers, 
but marshalling the phalanx of embattled arguments 
and pointed illustrations, pouring his thoughts forth in 
columns of continuous flame, mingling figures of sub- 
limest imagery with reasonings of severest accuracy, 
at one time melting his audience to tears, at another 
freezing them to terror, again quickening their souls 
with prayers and pleadings that had in them the sweet- 
ness of the very spirit of Christ. His sermons began 
with scholastic exposition; as they advanced, the ec- 
stasy of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the sym- 
pathies of the whole people of Florence gathered round 
him. The walls of the church re-echoed with sobs, and 
wailings dominated by one ringing voice. ‘The scribe, 
to whom we owe the fragments of these sermons, at 
times breaks off with these words: ‘“ Here I was so 
overcome with weeping that I could not go on.” Pico 
della Mirandola tells us that the mere sound of Sa- 
vonarola’s voice, startling the stillness of the Duomo, 
thronged through all its space with people, was like a 
clap of doom; a cold shiver ran through the marrow 
of his bones, the hairs of his head stood on end as 
he listened. Another witness reports: “These ser- 
mons caused such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears, 
that every one passed through the streets without 
speaking, more dead than alive.” 


His thrilling 
oratory. 


SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 95 


Such was the preacher, and such was the effect of 
his oratory. The theme on which he loved 
to dwell was this: “Repent! a judgment His denun- 
of God is at hand: a sword is suspended bari 
over you. Italy is doomed for her iniquity—for the 
sins of the Church whose adulterers have filled the 
world—for the sins of the tyrants who encourage crime 
and trample on souls—for the sins of you people, you 
fathers and mothers, you young men, you maidens, you 
children that lisp blasphemy!” Nor did Savonarola 
deal in generalities. He described in plain language 
every vice; he laid bare every abuse; so that a mirror 
was held up to the souls of his hearers, in which they 
saw their most secret faults appallingly portrayed and 
ringed round with fire. He entered with particularity 
into the details of the coming woes. One by one he 
enumerated the bloodshed, the ruin of cities, the tramp- 
ling down of provinces, the passage of armies, the 
desolating wars that were about to fall on Italy. We 
may read pages of his sermons which seem like vivid 
narratives of what afterwards took place in the sack of 
Prato, in the storming of Brescia, in the battle of the 
Ronco, in the cavern massacre of Vicenza. Within 
three years after his first sermon in S. Mark’s, Charles 
VIII. had entered Italy, Lorenzo de’ Medici was 
dead, and politicians no less than mystics felt that a 
new chapter had been opened in the world’s history. 

Lorenzo soon began to resent the influence of this 
uncompromising monk, who, not content _. 
os . His unbend- 
with moral exhortations, confidently pre- ing conduct 
dicted the coming of a foreign conqueror, towards 
the fall of the Magnificent, the peril of the Ee 
Pope, and the ruin of the King of Naples. Yet it was 


96 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. S 


no longer easy to suppress the preacher. Very early 
in his Florentine career Savonarola had proved him- 
self to be fully as great an administrator as an orator. 
San Marco, dominated by his personal authority, had 
made him prior in 1491, and he was already engaged 
in a thorough reform of all the Dominican monasteries 
of Tuscany. It was usual for the prior-elect to pay a 
complimentary visit to the Medici, their patron. Savo- 
narola, thinking this a worldly and unseemly custom, 
omitted to observe it. Lorenzo, noticing the discour- 
tesy, is reported to have said with asmile: “ See, now ! 
here is a stranger who has come into my house and 
will not deign to visit me.” At the same time the 
prince made overtures of good-will to the prior, fre- 
quently attended his services, and dropped gold into 
the alms-box of S. Mark’s. Savonarola took no notice 
of him, but handed his florins over to the poor of the 
city. Then Lorenzo stirred up Mariano da Genezzano, 
Savonarola’s old rival, against him; but the clever 
rhetorician was no longer a match for the full-grown 
athlete of inspired eloquence. Da Genezzano was 
forced to leave Florence in angry discomfiture. With 
such unbending haughtiness did Savonarola already 
dare to brave the powers that be. He had recognized 
the oppressor of liberty, the corrupter of morality, the 
opponent of true religion, in Lorenzo. He hated him 
as atyrant. He would not give him the right hand of 
friendship or the salute of civility. In the same spirit 
he afterwards denounced Pope Alexander VI., scorned 
his excommunication, and plotted with the kings of 
Christendom for the convening of a council. Lorenzo, 
however, was a man of supreme insight into character, 
and knew how to value his antagonist. Therefore, 


SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 97 


when the hour for dying came, and when, true child of 
the Renaissance, he felt the need of sacraments and 
absolution, he sent for Savonarola, saying that he was 
the only honest friar he knew.’ The magnanimity of 
the prince was only equalled by the firmness of the 
monk. Standing by the bedside of the dying man, who 
had confessed his sins, Savonarola said: ‘Three things 
are required of you: to have a full and lively faith in 
God’s mercy ; to restore what you have unjustly gained ; 
to give back liberty to Florence.” Lorenzo assented 
readily to the two first requisitions. At the third he 
turned his face in silence to the wall. He must indeed 
have felt that to demand and promise this was easier 
than to carry it intoeffect. Savonarola left him without 
absolution. Lorenzo died. 

To Lorenzo succeeded the incompetent Piero de’ 
Medici, who surrendered the fortresses of _. 

His effort to 

Tuscany, as we shall see, to theFrench army. rouse the 
While Savonarola was prophesying the RB 
judgment at hand, Charles VIII. rode at 
the head of his knighthood into Florence. The city 
was leaderless, unused to liberty. Who but the monk 
who had predicted the invasion should now attempt 
to control it? His administrative faculty in a narrow 
sphere had been proved by his reform of the Do- 
minican monasteries. He felt that the Lord had 
raised him up to act as well as to utter: the people 
felt it. He was not the man to shirk responsibility. 
During the years 1493 and 1494 the voice of Savonarola 
never ceased to ring. From his pulpit beneath the 
sombre dome of Brunelleschi he kept pouring forth 
words of power to resuscitate the free spirit of the 
Florentines. 


7 


93 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


In 1495, when the Medici had been expelled, and 
His adminis. the French army had gone on its way to 
tration of the Naples, as we shall presently see, Savon- 
Brae arola was called upon to reconstitute the 
State. He bade the people abandon their old system 
and to establish a Grand Council after the Venetian 
type. This institution, which seemed to the Floren- 
tines the best they had ever adopted, might be regarded 
by the historian as only one among their many experi- 
ments in constitution-making, if Savonarola had not 
stamped it with his peculiar genius by announcing that 
Christ was to be considered the Head of the State. 
This step at once gave a theocratic bias to the govern- 
ment which determined all the acts of the monk’s 
administration. Notcontent with political organization, 
too impatient to await the growth of good manners 
from sound institutions, he set about a moral and re- 
ligious reformation. Pomps, vanities, and vices were 
to be abandoned. Immediately the women and the 
young men threw aside their silks and fine attire. The 
carnival songs ceased. Hymns and processions took 
the place of obscene choruses and pagan triumphs. 
The laws were remodelled in the same severe and 
abrupt spirit. Usury was abolished. Whatever Sa- 
vonarola ordained, Florence executed. By the magic of 
his influence the city for a moment assumed a new as- 
pect. The change was far tooviolent. The temper of 
the race was not prepared for it. It clashed too 
rudely with Renaissance culture. It outraged the 
sense of propriety in the more moderate citizens, and 
roused to vindictive fury the worst passions of the 
self-indulgent and the worldly. <A reaction was in 
evitable. 


SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 99 


It was no wonder if, passing as he had done from 
the discipline of the cloister to the dictator- 4 reaction 
ship of a republic, Savonarola should make follows. 
extravagant mistakes. The tension of this abnormal 
situation in the city grew to be excessive, and cool 
thinkers predicted that Savonarola’s position would be- 
come untenable. The followers of the monk, by far 
the largest section of the people, received the name of 
Piagoni or Frateschi. The friends of the Medici, few at 
first, and cautious, were called 4777. The opponents 
of Savonarola and of the Medici, who hated the theoc- 
racy, and desired to see an oligarchy and not a tyranny 
in Florence, were known as the 4rraddiati. 

The discontent which germinated in Florence dis- 
played itself in Rome. Alexander found me 
ae : : Mae e inter- 
it intolerable to be assailed as antichrist position of 
by a monk who had made himself master of Alexander 
the chief Italian republic. At first he used Ves 
his arts of blandishment and honeyed words, in order 
to lure Savonarola to Rome. The friar refused to 
quit Florence. Then Alexander suspended him from 
preaching. Savonarola obeyed, but wrote at the 
same time to Charles VIII., denouncing his in- 
dolence and calling upon him to reform the Church. 
At the request of the Florentine Republic, though 
still suffering from the Pope’s interdict, he then 
resumed his preaching. Alexander sought next to 
corrupt the monk he could not intimidate. To the 
suggestion that a cardinal’s hat might be offered him, 
Savonarola replied that he preferred the red crown 
of martyrdom. Ascending the pulpit of the Duomo 
in 1496, he prepared the most fiery of all his Lenten 
courses. 


100 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


Very terrible indeed are the denunciations contained 
in these discourses—denunciations ful: 

Savonaroiais minated without disguise against the Pope 
pagennabell and priests of Rome, against the Medici, 
against the Florentines themselves, in whom 

the traces of rebellion were beginning to appear. 
Mingled with these vehement invectives, couched in 
Savonarola’s most impassioned style, and heightened 
by the most impressive imagery, are political harangues 
and polemical arguments against the Pope. The posi- 
tion assumed by the friar in his war with Rome was not 
a strong one, and the reasoning by which he supported 
it was marked by curious self-deception mingled with 
apparent efforts to deceive his audience. He had not 
the audacious originality of Luther. He never went to 
the length of braving Alexander by burning his bulls, 
and by denying the authority of popes in general. Not 
daring to break all connection with the Holy See, he 
was driven to quibble about the distinction between the 
office and the man, assuming a hazardous attitude of 
obedience to the Church whose head and chief he 
dail:y outraged. All the tyrants came in for a share of 
his prophetic indignation, Lodovico Sforza, the lord 
of Mirandola, and Piero de’ Medici felt themselves 
specially aggrieved, and kept urging Alexander to extin- 
guish this source ofscandal to established government. 
Against so great and powerful a host one man could 
not stand alone. Savonarola’s position became daily 
more dangerous in Florence. The merchants, excom- 
municated by the Pope, and thus exposed to pillage in 
foreign markets, grumbled at- the friar who spoiled 
their trade. ‘The ban of interdiction lay upon the city, 
where the sacraments could no longer be administered 


SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 1or 


or the dead be buried with the rites of Christians. 
Meanwhile a band of high-spirited and profligate young 
men, called Compagnacci, used every occasion to insult 
and interrupt him. At last, in March 1498, his staunch 
friends the Signory, or supreme executive of Florence, 
suspended him from preaching in the Duomo. Even 
the populace were weary of the protracted quarrel 
with the Holy See; nor could any but his own fa- 
natical adherents anticipate with equanimity the wars 
which threatened the State. 

Savonarola himself felt that the supreme hour was 
come. One more resource was left; to yr, jetters 
that he would now betake himself. This of justifica- 
last step was the convening of a General ®™ 
Council. Accordingly, he addressed letters to all the 
European potentates. One of these, inscribed to 
Charles VIII., was intercepted and conveyed to Alex- 
ander. He wrote also to the Pope and warned him of 
his purpose. The termination of that epistle is note- 
worthy: “J can thus have no longer any hope in your 
Holiness, but must turn to Christ alone, who chooses 
the weak of this world to confound the strong lions 
among the perverse generations. He will assist me to 
prove and sustain, in the face of the world, the holiness 
of the work for which I so greatly suffer; and He will 
inflict a just punishment on those who persecute me 
and would impede its progress. As for myself, I seek 
no earthly glory, but long eagerly for death. May your 
Holiness no longer delay, but look to your salvation.” 

While thus girding on his armor for this single 
handed combat with the Primate of Christ- 5... ore 
endom and the princes of Italy, the martyr- onment and 
dom to which Savonarola now looked ‘rture 


102 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


forward fell upon him. Growing yearly more con 
fident in his visions, and more willing to admit his 
supernatural powers, he had imperceptibly prepared the 
pit which finally engulfed him. Often had he pro- 
fessed his readiness to prove his vocation by fire. Now 
_came the moment when this defiance to an ordeal was 
answered, A Franciscan of Apulia offered to meet 
him in the flames and see whether he were of God or 
not. Fra Domenico, Savonarola’s devoted friend, took 
up the gauntlet and proposed himself as champion. 
The pile was prepared; both monks stood ready to 
enter it; all Florence was assembled in the Piazza dei 
Signori to witness what should happen. Various 
obstacles, however, arose; and, after waiting a whole. 
day for the friar’s triumph, the people had to retire to 
their homes under a pelting shower of rain, unsatisfied, 
and with a dreary sense that after all their prophet was 
but a mere man. The Compagnacci, who probably 
initiated the challenge, thus got the upper hand. San 
Marco was besieged; Savonarola was led to prison, 
never to issue till the day of his execution by the rope 
and faggot. Little is known about these last weeks, 
except that in his cell the friar composed his medita- 
tions on the 31st and 51st Psalms, the latter of which 
was published in Germany with a preface by Luther in 
1573. Of the rest we hear only of prolonged torture 
before stupid and malignant judges, of falsified evidence 
and of contradictory confessions. What he really said 
and chose to stand by, what he retracted, what he 
shrieked out in the delirium of the rack, and what was 
falsely imputed to him, no one now can settle. Though 
the spirit was strong, the flesh was weak; he had the 
will but not the nerve for martyrdom. 


SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 103 


At ten o’clock on May 23, 1498, Savonarola was 
led forth, together with brother Salvestro 
the confidant of his visions, and brother 
Domenico, his champion in the affair of the ordeal, 
to a stage prepared in the same Piazza, These two 
men were hanged first. As the hangman tied the 
rope round Savonarola’s neck, a voice from the 
crowd shouted: ‘ Prophet, now is the time to per- 
form a miracle.” The Bishop of Vasona, who con- 
ducted the execution, stripped the friar’s frock from 
him, and said: “I separate thee from the Church 
militant and triumphant.” Savonarola, firm and com-~ 
bative even at the point of death, replied: “ Militant, 
yes: triumphant, no: that is not yours.” The last 
words he uttered were: ‘The Lord has suffered so 
much for me.”” Then the noose was tightened round 
his neck, The fire beneath was lighted. The flames 
did not reach his body while life was in it; but those 
who gazed intently thought they saw the right hand 
give the signal of benediction. A little child afterwards 
saw his heart still whole among the ashes cast into the 
Arno; and almost to this day flowers have been placed 
every morning of May 23 upon the slab of the Piazza 
where his body fell. 

Thus died Savonarola ; and immediately he became 
a saint. - His sermons and other works were he honors 
universally distributed. Medals in his paid to his 
honor were struck. Raphael painted him ™°"°% 
among the Doctors of the Church in the Camera della 
Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church, with strange 
inconsistency, proposed to canonize the man whom she 
had burned as a contumacious heretic and a corrupter 
of the people. This canonization never took place; 


His death. 


104 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER. 


but many Dominican churches used a special office 
with his name and in his honor. A legend similar to 
that of S. Francis, in its wealth of mythical details, 
embalmed the memory of even the smallest details of 
his life. But, above all, he lived in the hearts of the 
Florentines. For many years to come his name was 
the watchword of their freedom; his prophecies sus- 
tained their spirits during the siege of 1529, of which 
we shall speak later on; and it was only by returning 
to his policy that Niccolo Caponi and Francesco Car- 
ducci ruled the people through those troublous times, 
The political action of Savonarola forms but a short 
episode in the history of Florence. His moral revival 
belongs to the history of popular enthusiasm. His 
philosophical and theological writings are chiefly inter- 
esting to the student of post-medizval scholasticism. 
His attitude as a monastic leader of the populace, 
attempting to suspend by appeals to piety the factious 
warfare of a previous age, was anachronistic. But his 
insight into the coming of a new era for the Church 
and for Italy is a main fact in the psychology of the 
Renaissance. 


VI. 
THE RAID OF CHARLES VIly. 


"T‘HE first sign of the alteration about to take place 

in European history was the invasion of Italy by 
Charles VIII. This holiday excursion by a hare 
brained youth was as transient as a border foray ona 
large scale. The so-called conquest was only less 
sudden than the subsequent loss of Italy by the French. 
Yet the tornado which swept the peninsula from north 
to south, and returned upon its path from south to 
north within the space of afew months, left inefface- 
able traces on the country which it traversed, and 
changed the whole complexion of the politics of 
Europe. 

The invasion of Italy had been long prepared in the 
The accession counsels of Louis XI. After spending his 
ofCharles = jifetime in the consolidation of the French 
oa monarchy, he constructed an inheritance of 
further empire for his successors by dictating to the 
old King René of Anjou (1474) and to the Count of 
Maine (1481) the two wills by which the pretensions 
of the House of Anjou to the Crown of Naples were 
transmitted to the royal family of France. On the 
death of Louis, Charles VIII. became king in 1483. 
He was then aged only thirteen, and was still governed 
by his elder sister, Anne de Beaujeu. It was not until 


106 THE RAID OF CHARLES VI/1. 


1492 that he actually took the reins of the kingdom 
into his own hands. This year, we may remark, is one 
of the most memorable dates in history. In 1492 
Columbus discovered America: in 1492 Roderigo Bor- 
gia was made Pope: in 1492 Spain became a nation 
by the conquest of Granada. Each of these events 
was no less fruitful of consequences to Italy than was 
the accession of Charles VIII. 
Both Philip de Comines and Guicciardini have de- 
scribed the appearance and the character of 
es the prince who was destined to play a part so 
prominent, so pregnant of results, and yetso 
trivial, in the affairs of Europe. “ From infancy he had 
been weak in constitution and subject to illnesses. His 
stature was short and his face very ugly, if you except 
the dignity and vigor of his glance. His limbs were 
so disproportioned that he had less the appearance of 
a man than of a monster. Not only was he ignorant of 
liberal arts, but he hardly knew his letters. Though 
eager to rule, he was in truth made for anything but 
that ; for while surrounded by dependents he exercised 
no authority over them, and preserved no kind of 
majesty. Hating business and fatigue, he displayed in 
such matters as he took in hand a want of prudence 
and of judgment. His desire for glory sprang rather 
from impulse than from reason. His liberality was in- 
considerate, immoderate, promiscuous. When he dis- 
played inflexibility of purpose, it was more often an 
ill-founded obstinacy than firmness; and that which 
many people called his goodness of nature rather de- 
served the name of coldness and feebleness of spirit.” 
This is Guicciardini’s portrait. De Comines is more 
brief: “ The king was young, a fledgling from the nest; 


ae 


THE RAID OF CHARLES VIII. 107 


provided neither with money nor with good sense ; 
weak, wilful, and surrounded by foolish counsellors.” 

The splendor and novelty of the proposal to conquer 
such a realm as Italy inflamed the im- a 
agination of Charles and the cupidity of eae 
his courtiers. In order to assure his situ- 
ation at home, Charles concluded treaties with the 
neighboring great powers. He bought peace with 
Henry VII. of England by the payment of large sums 
of money. The Emperor Maximilian, whose resent- 
ment he had aroused by sending back his daughter 
Margaret after breaking his promise to marry her, and 
by taking to wife Anne of Brittany, who was already 
engaged to the Austrian, had to be appeased by the 
cession of provinces. Ferdinand of Spain received, as 
the price of his neutrality, the strong places of the 
Pyrenees which formed the key to France on that side. 
After concentrating stores at the southern ports of Mar- 
seilles and Genoa, Charles moved downward with his 
army to Lyons in 1494. 

There were various instances of private cupidity and 
spite on the part of the princes to which oye vows in 
this impending calamity to Italy may be which this 
traced: Lodovico Sforza’s determination to ¥4* held. 
secure himself in the usurped Duchy of Milan; 
the concealed hatred of his father-in-law, Ercole 
d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who hoped to secure his 
own advantage in the general confusion; and 
Alexander VI.’s unholy eagerness to aggrandize his 
bastards. On the part of the people the invasion of 
the French was regarded with that sort of fascination 
which a very new and exciting event is wont to inspire. 
In one mood the Italians were inclined to hail Charles 


108 THE RAID OF CHARLES Vill, 


as a general pacificator and restorer of old liberties. 
Savonarola had preached of him as the flagellum Dei, 
the minister appointed to regenerate the Church, and 
to purify the fount of spiritual life in the peninsula. 
In another frame of mind they shuddered to think what 
the advent of the barbarians—so the French were 
-called—might bring upon them. It was universally 
agreed that Lodovico by his invitation had done no 
more than bring down, as it were, by a breath the 
avalanche which had been long impending. 
While Alfonso of Naples, against whom the invasion 
was specially directed, was doing what he 
Charles’s = could to get Florence, Rome, Bologna, and 
advance into . 
Lombardy. all the minor powers of Romagna to 
assist him, Charles VIII. remained at 
Lyons, still uncertain whether he should enter Italy by 
sea or land, or, indeed, whether he should enter it at 
all. Having advanced as far as the Rhone valley, he 
felt satisfied with his achievement, and indulged him- 
self in a long bout of tournaments and pastimes. Be- 
sides, the want of money, which was to be his chief 
embarrassment throughout the expedition, had already 
made itself felt. It was an Italian who at length roused 
him to make good his purpose against Italy—Giuliano 
della Rovere, the haughty nephew of Sixtus, the im- 
placable foe of Alexander, whom he was destined, as 
we have seen, to succeed upon the papal throne. 
Burning to punish the Marrano, or apostate Moor, as 
he called Alexander, Giuliano stirred the king with | 
taunts and menaces until Charles felt that he could 
delay no longer. When once the French army got 
under way it moved rapidly. | Leaving Vienne on 
August 23, 1494, 3,600 men-at-arms, the flower of the 


THE RAID OF CHARLES VI/. 109 


French chivalry, 6,000 Breton archers, 6,000 cross 
bowmen, 8,000 Gascon infantry, 8,000 Swiss and Ger- 
man fances, crossed the Mont Genevre, debouched on 
Susa, passed through Turin, and entered Asti on Sep- 
tember 19. Neither Piedmont nor Montferrat stirred 
to resist them. The princes, whose interest it might 
have been to throw obstacles in the way of Charles, 
were but children. 

At Asti Charles was met by Lodovico Sforza and 
his father-in-law, Ercole d’Este, with the »,, fostals 
whole court of Milan. It was the policy of made to 
the Italian princes to entrap their conqueror is heart. 
with courtesies, and to entangle in silken meshes the 
barbarian they dreaded. What had happened already 
at Lyons, what was going to repeat itself at Naples, took 
place at Asti. The French king lost his heart to ladies, 
and confused his policy by promises made to Delilahs 
in the ball-room. But he shortly moved on to Pavia, 
and here he had to endure the pathetic spectacle of 
his forlorn cousin, the young Gian Galeazzo Sforza, 
in prison, and of the beautiful Isabella of Aragon 
pleading for him. Nursed in chivalrous traditions, in- 
capable of resisting a woman’s tears, what was Charles 
to do when this princess in distress—the wife of his first 
cousin and the sister of the man he had come to ruin, 
Alfonso of Naples—was at his feet beseeching him for 
mercy on her husband, on her brother, and on herself? 
The situation was indeed enough to move a stouter 
heart than that of the feeble young king. For the mo- 
ment he returned evasive answers; and he had no sooner 
set forth on his way to Piacenza than Il Moro deter- 
mined that there should be no further room for vacir 
lation by having his nephew poisoned. 


{10 THE RAID OF CHARLES VIii. 


The French force pushed on to Parma, and in the 
Advances beginning of November appeared before the 
to Pisa. walls of Sarzana. There had been no op- 
position from Piero de’ Medici, who had undertaken 
to defend the passes of the Apennines. This false 
and weak-hearted tyrant, on the contrary, rode with all 
speed into the French camp, and delivered up to 
Charles the keys not only of Sarzana but of Leghorn 
and Pisa, and so opening up the way along a narrow 
belt of land hemmed in by the sea and the highest 
mountain-range in Italy, which might easily have been 
defended. The Florentines, whom Piero had hitherto 
engaged in an unpopular policy, now rose in fury, ex- 
pelled him from the city, sacked his palace, and erased 
from theirmemory the name of Medici except for execra- 
tion. He saved his life by flying first to Bologna and 
thence to Venice, where be remained in a sort of polite 
captivity. 

On November g, Florence, after a tyranny of fifty years, 

and Pisa, after the servitudeof acentury, 
Florence and . tee 
Pisarecover recovered their liberties and were able to 
their liber- reconstitute republican governments. But 
me the situation of the two states was very 
different. The Florentines had never lost the name 
of liberty, which in Italy at that period meant less the 
freedom of the inhabitants to exercise self-government 
than the independence of the city in relation to its 
neighbors. The Pisans, on the other hand, had been 
reduced to subjection by the Florentines, their civil life 
had been stifled, their pride wounded, and their popula- 
tion decimated by proscription and exile. The great sin 
of Florence was the enslavement of Pisa; and Pisa, in 
this moment of anarchy. burned to obliterate her shame. 


THE RAID OF CHARLES V/7/1, 111 


After the flight of Piero and the proclamation of 
Pisan liberty, the King of France was hailed 47, enters 
as a saviour of the free Italian towns. Florence. 
Charles received a magnificent address from Savonarola, 
who proceeded to Pisa and harangued him as the 
chosen vessel of the Lord and the deliverer of the 
Church from anarchy. At the same time the friar 
conveyed to the French king a courteous invitation 
from the Florentine republic to enter their city and 
enjoy their hospitality. Charles, after upsetting Piero 
de’ Medici with the nonchalance of a horseman in the 
tilting-yard and restoring the freedom of Pisa for a 
caprice, remained as devoid of policy and as indifferent 
to the part assigned him by the prophet as he was before. 
He rode, armed at all points, into Florence on November 
17, and took up his residence in the palace of the Medici. 
Then he informed the elders of the city that he had 
come as conqueror and not as guest, and that he in- 
tended to reserve to himself the disposition of the state. 

It was a dramatic moment. Florence with the Arno 
flowing through her midst, and the hills 
encircling her gray with olive-trees, was then 
even more lovely than wesee her now. The 
whole circuit of her walls, with its towers, was then un- 
impaired. Brunelleschi’s dome and Giotto’s tower, 
Arnolfo’s Palazzo and the Loggia of Orcagna, gave 
distinction to her streets and squares. Her churches 
were splendid with frescoes in their bloom and with 
painted glass, over which as yet the injury of but a few 
brief years had passed. Her paleces, that are as strong 
as castles, overflowed with a population cultivated, 
polished, refined, and haughty. This Florence, the 
city of scholars, artists, intellectual sybarites, and 


Florence at 
that time. 


112 THE RAID OF CHARLES Vill. 


citizens in whom the blood of the old factions beat, 
found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by 
flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed 
Germans, kilted Kelts, and parti-colored Swiss. 

Charles here, as elsewhere, showed his imbecility. 
He neuen He had entered and laid hands on hospit- 
aransomto able Florence like a foe. What would he 
quit Flor- now do with her ?—reform the republic— 
aia legislate—impose a levy on the citizens, and 
lead them forth to battle? No. He asked for a large 
sum of money, and began to bargain. The Florentine 
secretaries refused his terms. He insisted. Then Piero 
Capponi snatched the paper on which they were written, 
and tore it in pieces before his eyes. Charles cried: 
**T shall sound my trumpets.” Capponi answered, 
“We will ring our bells.” Beautiful as a dream is 
Florence ; but her sombre streets, overshadowed by 
gigantic belfries and grim palace-fronts, contained a 
menace that the French king could not face. Let Cap- 
poni sound the tocsin, and each house would become 
a fortress, the streets would be barricaded with iron 
chains, every quarter would pour forth men by hundreds, 
well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave 
way, covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt : 
“ 4h! Ciappon, Ciappon, vot siete un mal Ciappon /™ 
All he cared for was to get money. He agreed to 
content himself with 120,000 florins. A treaty was 
signed, and in two days he quitted Florence. 

Rome now lay before him, magnificent in desolation : 
at Gass not the Rome which the Farnesi and Chigi 
to Rome, and Barberini have built up from the quar- 
whichhe ried ruins of amphitheatres and baths, but 
the Rome of the Middle Ages, the city 


THE RAID OF CHARLES VII. 113 


crowned with relics of a pagan past, herself still pagan, 
and holding in her midst the modern Antichrist. The 
progress of the French was acontinued triumph. They 
reached Siena on December 2. The Duke of Urbino 
and the Lords of Pesaro and Bologna laid down their 
arms at their approach. The Orsini opened their 
castles ; Virginio, the captain-general of the Aragonese 
army, and grand constable of the kingdom of Naples, 
hastened to win for himself favorable terms from the 
French sovereign. ‘The Baglioni betook themselves to 
their own rancors in Perugia. The Duke of Calabria 
retreated. Italy seemed bent on proving that coward- 
ice, selfishness, and incapacity had conquered her. 
Viterbo was gained; the Ciminian heights were trav- 
ersed ; the Campagna, bounded by the Alban and the 
Sabine hills, with Rome a bluish cloud upon the low- 
lands of the Tiber, spread its solemn breadth of beauty 
at the invader’s feet. Nota blow had been struck when 
he reached the Porta del Popolo upon December 31, 
1494. It was nine at night before the last soldiers, 
under the flaring light of torches and flambeaux, defiled 
through the gate and took up their quarters in the 
streets of the Eternal City. The gigantic barbarians 
of the cantons, flaunting with plumes and emblazoned 
surcoats; the chivalry of France, splendid with silk 
mantles and gilded corselets ; the Scotch guard in their 
wild costume of kilt and philibeg; the scythe-like hal- 
berts of the German landsknechts; the tangled elf- 
locks of stern-featured Bretons, stamped an inefface- 
able impression on the people of the South. On this 
memorable occasion, as ina show upon some holiday, 
marched past before them specimens and vanguards of 
all those legioned races which, thirty-two years later, as 


114 THE RAID OF CHARLES VII. 


we have related, when Clement VII. was Pope, were 
rioting in every street and dwelling-place. Nothing 
was wanting to complete the symbol of the coming 
doom but representatives of the coarse, black, wiry 
infantry of Spain. 

The Borgia meanwhile crouched within the castle of 
S. Angelo. How would the conqueror, the 


His terms : i pacity 
to quit flagellum Dei, deal with the abomination of 
Rome. desolation seated in the holy place of Chris- 


tendom? At the side of Charles were the Cardinals 
Ascanio Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere, urging him 
to summon a council and depose the Pope. But still 
closer to his ear was Briconnet, the cz-devant tradesman, 
now Bishop of S. Malo, who thought it would become 
his dignity to wear a cardinal’s hat. On this trifle 
turned the destinies of Rome, the doom of Alexander, 
the fate of the Church. Charles demanded a few for- 
tresses, a red hat for Briconnet, Cesare Borgia as a 
hostage for four months, and Djem, the brother of the 
Sultan. After these agreements had been made and 
ratified, Alexander ventured to leave his retreat, and 
receive the homage of the faithful. Charles stayed a 
month in Rome, and then set out for Naples. 

The dynasty in Naples which Charles now hoped to 
altines the dispossess was Spanish. After the death 
Magnani- Of Joanna IJ. in 1435, Alfonso, King of 
Mantes Aragon and Sicily, who had no claim to the 

; crown beyond what he derived through a bas- 
tard branch of the old Norman dynasty, conquered Na- 
ples, expelled Count René of Anjou, and established him- 
self in this new kingdom, which he preferred to those he 
had inherited by right. Alfonso, surnamed the Magnani- 
mous, was one of the most brilliant and romantic person- 


THE RAID OF CHARLES VIII. 115 


ages of the fifteenth century. Historians are never 
weary of relating his victories over Caldora and Fran- 
cesco Sforza, the coup-de-main by which he expelled his 
rival, René, and the fascination he exercised in Milan, 
while a captive, over the jealous spirit of Filippo Maria 
Visconti. Scholars are no less profuse in their praises 
of his virtues, his justice, humanity, generosity, and cult- 
ure, which rendered him pre-eminent among the princes 
of that period. The many splendid qualities by which 
he was distinguished were enhanced rather than ob- 
scured by the romance of his private life. Married to 
Margaret of Castile, he had no legitimate children: 
Ferdinand, with whom he shared the government of 
Naples in 1443, and whom he designated as his suce 
cessor in 1458, was supposed to be his son by Margaret 
de Hijar, though Pontano, who was Ferdinand’s secre 
tary, affirmed that the real father of the Duke of Cala- 
bria was a Marrano of Calabria. The queen, however, 
caused her supposed rival to be murdered. 

It would indeed be almost incredible that sucha 
father could have been the parent of such His son, 
a son. In Ferdinand the instinct of Ferdinand. 
liberal culture degenerated into vulgar magnificence ; 
courtesy and confidence gave place to cold suspicion 
and brutal cruelty. His ferocity bordered on madness. 
He used to keep the victims of his hatred in cages, 
where their misery afforded him the same delight as 
some men derive from watching the antics of monkeys. 
In his hunting establishment were repeated the worst 
atrocities of Bernabo Visconti; wretches mutilated 
for neglect of his hounds extended their handless 
stumps for charity to the travellers through his villages. 
Alfonso, the Magnanimous, had been remarkable for 


216 THE RAID OF CHARLES VIII. 


his generosity and sincerity. Ferdinand was a demon 
for dissimulation, treachery, and avarice. 

Alfonso II. was ason worthy of such a terrible father. 
The only difference between them was 
that Ferdinand dissembled, while Alfonso, 
whose bravery at Otranto against the Turks had sur- 
rounded him with military glory, abandoned himself 
with cynicism to his passions. Yet, bold general in 
the field, and able man of affairs as he might be, he 
found no courage to resist the approaching conqueror. 
It is no fiction of a poet or a moralist, but plain matter 
of history, that this King of Naples, grandson of the 
great Alfonso, and father of the Ferdinand to be, 
quailed before the myriads of accusing dead that rose 
to haunt his tortured fancy in this hour of peril. The 
people, too, around his gates were muttering in re- 
bellion. The dastard abdicated in favor of his son, 
took ship for Sicily, and died there conscience-stricken 
in a monastery before the year was out. 

For Ferdinand, though a brave youth, beloved by 
the nation in spite of his grandfather’s and 
father’s tyranny, the situation was unten- 
able. Everywhere he was beset by traitors. Without 
soldiers, without allies, with nothing to rely upon 
but the untried goodwill of subjects who had just rea- 
son to execrate his race, and with the conqueror of 
Italy advancing with strides through his states, retreat 
alone was left him. After abandoning his castles to 
pillage, burning the ships in the harbor, and setting Don 
Federigo, together with the Queen dowager and the 
Princess Joanna, upon a quick-sailing galley, Ferdinand 
bade farewell to his kingdom. Between the beach of 
Naples and the rocky shore of Ischia, for which the 


Alfonso II. 


Ferdinand II. 


THE RAID OF CHARLES VT/I. 117 


wxiles were bound, there is only the distance of some 
seventeen miles. It was in February, a month of mild 
and melancholy sunshine in those southern regions, 
when the whole bay of Naples with its belt of distant 
hills is wont to take one tint of modulated azure, that 
the royal fugitives performed this voyage. As the 
shore receded from his view, historians relate that the 
unhappy Ferdinand, in a voice as sad as Boabdil’s when 
he sat down to weep for Granada, exclaimed from the 
127th Psalm: “Except the Lord keep the city, the 
watchman waketh but in vain.” 

Charles entered Naples as a conqueror or liberator 
on February 22, 1495. He was welcomed 
and féted by the Neapolitans, than whom 
no people are more childishly delighted 
with a change of masters. He enjoyed his usual sports, 
and indulged in his usual love affairs. With suicidal 
insolence and want of policy he alienated the sympathies 
of the noble families by dividing the titles, offices, and 
fiefs of the kingdom among his retinue. Without re- 
ceiving so much as a provisional investiture from the 
Pope, he satisfied his vanity by parading, on May 12, 
as sovereign, with a ball in one hand and a sceptre in 
the other, through the city. 

While Charles was amusing himself in Naples, a 
storm was gathering in his rear. A league yo storm 
against him had been formed in April by _ rises in his 
the great powers of Europe. Venice,alarmed *** 
for the independence of Italy, and urged by the Sultan, 
headed the league. Lodovico, now that he had attained 
is selfish object in the quiet possession of Milan, was 
anxious for his safety. Maximilian, who could not forget 
the slight put upon him in the matter of his daughter and 


Charles en- 
ters Naples. 


118 THE RAID OF CHARLES VIII. 


his bride, was willing to co-operate against his rival. 
Ferdinand and Isabella, having secured themselves in 
Roussillon, thought it behooved them to re-establish 
Spaniards of their kith and kin in Naples. 

The danger was imminent. Already Ferdinand the 
His retreat Catholic had disembarked troops on the 
andretumn shore of Sicily, and was ready to throw an 
ho Ait. army into the ports of Reggio and Tropea ; 
Alexander had refused to carry out his treaty by the 
surrender of Spoleto; Cesare Borgia had escaped from 
the French camp. The Lombards were menacing Asti, 
which the Duke of Orleans held, and without its pos- 
session there was no safe retreat towards France. His 
troops decimated by disease and worn out by debauch- 
ery, Charles saw the necessity of retracing his steps in 
haste, passed Rome, and reached Siena on June 13. 
The forces of the league had already taken the field. 
The key of the pass through the Apennines by which 
Charles sought to regain Lombardy is the town of 
Pontremoli. Leaving that in ashes on June 29, the 
French army, distressed for provisions and in peril 
amongst the hills, pushed onward with all speed. They 
knew that the allied forces, commanded by the Marquis 
of Mantua, were waiting for them at the other side upon 
the Taro, near the village of Fornovo. Here, if any- 
where, the French ought to have beencrushed. They 
numbered about g,ooo men in all, while the troops of 
the league were close upon 40,000, The French were 
weary with long marches, insufficient food, and bad 
quarters. The Italians were fresh and well cared for. 
Yet in spite of all this, in spite of blind generalship 
and total blundering, Charles continued to play his part 
of Fortune’s favorite to the end. A bloody battle, 


THE RAID Of CHARLES V111. 119 


which lasted for an hour, took place upon the banks of 
the Taro. The Italians suffered so severely that, 
though they still far outnumbered the French, no per- 
suasion could make them rally and renew the fight. 
Charles in his own person ran great risks during this 
engagement, and, when it was over, he had to retreat 
upon Asti in the teeth of other forces. But the good 
luck of the French and the dilatory cowardice of their 
opponents again saved them for the last time. Charles, 
at the head of the remnant of his invading army, 
marched into Asti on July 15, and was practically safe. 
At Asti the young king continued to give signal 
proofs of his weakness. He made no effort j 
‘ He takes his 
to relieve the Duke of Orleans, who was ijatory 
hard pressed in Novara, or to use the 20,000 way back 
Switzers who had descended from their Alps Bir antes 
to aid him in the struggle with the league. At Turin, 
to which he now pushed on, he spent his time in flirting 
with Anna Soleri, the daughter of his host. This girl 
had been sent to harangue him with a set oration, and 
had fulfilled her task, in the words of an old witness, 
“ without wavering, coughing, spitting, or giving way at 
ail.” Her charms delayed the king in Italy until Octo- 
ber 19, when he signed a treaty at Vercelli with the 
Duke of Milan. He now only cared for a quick return 
to France. Reserving to himself the nominal right of 
using Genoa as a naval station, he made over the town 
to Lodovico Sforza, and confirmed him in the tranquil 
possession of his duchy. On October 22 Charles left 
Turin, and entered his own dominions through the Alps 
of Dauphiné. Already his famous conquest of Italy wag 
reckoned among the wonders of the past, and his sov- 
ereignty over Naples had become the shaaow of a name, 


520 THE RAID OF CHARLES VIIU. 


In spite of its transitory character, the invasion of 
The effect of CHarles VIII. was a great fact in the his- 
his raid upon tory of the Renaissance. It was the revela- 
tN, tion of Italy to the nations of the North, 
Like a gale sweeping across a forest of trees in 
blossom, and bearing their fertilizing pollen to far- 
distant trees, the storm of Charles’s army carried far 
and wide through Europe the productive energy of the 
Renaissance. For Italy the French invasion opened 
indeed a new era, but only in the sense that a pageant 
may form the prelude to a tragedy. Every monarch of 
Europe, dazzled by the splendid display of Charles, and 
forgetful of its insignificant results, began to look with 
greedy eyes upon the wealth of the peninsula. In the 
course of a few years, as we have seen, the Swiss found 
in those rich provinces an inexhaustible field for depre- 
dation. The Germans, under the pretence of religious 
zeal, gave a loose rein to their animal appetites in the 
metropolis of Christendom. France and Spain engaged 
in a duel to the death for the possession of so faira 
prey. Louis XII., who succeeded Charles, lost himseif 
in petty intrigues, by which he finally weakened his own 
cause to the profit of the Borgias and Austria. Francis I. 
foamed his force away like a spent wave at Marignano 
and Pavia. The real conqueror of Italy was Charles V. 
Italy in the sixteenth century was destined to receive 
the impress of the Spanish spirit, and to bear the yoke 
of Austrian dukes. Whether the Renaissance of the 
modern world would not have been yet more brilliant 
if Italy had remained free, who shall say? The very 
conditions which produced her culture seem to have 
rendered that impossible. 


VIL. 
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 


xe an introduction to the history of the Revival, and 
in order that the work to be performed by the 
Ttalian students may be accurately measured, it will be 
necessary to touch briefly upon the state of scholarship 
during the dark ages. To underrate the achievement 
of that period, especially in logic, theology, and law, is 
only too easy, seeing that a new direction was We to 
the mind of Europe by the Renaissance, and that we 
have moved continuously on other lines to other objects 
since the opening of the fifteenth century. Medieval 
thought was both acute and strenuous in its own region 
of activity. What it lacked was material outside the 
speculative sphere to feed upon. Culture, in our sense 
of the word, did not exist, and the intellect was forced 
to deal subtly with a very limited class of conceptions, 
Long before the fall of the Roman Empire it be- 
came clear that both fine arts and literature ; 

a, .,. The view of 
were gradually declining. The Church, while guiture be- 
battling with paganism, recognized her fore the Re- 
deadliest foe in literature. Not only were "™***00% 
the Greek and Latin masterpieces the strongholds of a 
mythology that had to be erased from the popular mind ; 
not only was their morality antagonistic to the principles 
of Christian ethics; in addition to these grounds for 


122 THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 


hatred and mistrust, the classics idealized a form of 
human life which the new faith regarded as worthless. 
What was the use of making this life refined and agree- 
able by study, when it formed but an insignificant 
prelude to an eternity wherein worldly learning would 
be valueless ? 

During the dark ages Italy had in no sense enjoyed 
Italy was superiority of culture over the rest of 
not in Europe. On the contrary, the first abor- 
na Hae xiatae! tive attempt at a revival of learning was 
tries in this; que to Charlemagne at Aix; the second to 
the Emperor Frederick in Apulia and Sicily; and 
while the Romance nations had lost the classical tra- 
dition, it was still to some extent preserved by the Mos- 
lem dynasties. The more we study the history of 
medizeval learning, the more we recognize the debt of 
civilized humanity to the Arabs for their conservation 
and transmission of Greek thought in an altered form to 
Europe. Yet, though the Italians came comparatively 
late into the field, their action was decisive. Neither 
Charlemagne nor Frederick, neither the philosophy of 
the Arabian sages nor the precocious literature of 
Provence, succeeded in effecting for the education of 
the modern intellect that which Dante and Petrarch 
performed—the one by the production of a monumental 
_ work of art in poetry, the other by the communication 
of a new enthusiasm for antiquity to students. 

Dante does not belong in any strict sense to the his- 

tory of the Revival of Learning. The Dz- 
Theinitia- vine Comedy closes the Middle Ages and pre- 
tive given by . — ‘ . 
Dante. serves their spirit. But it maybe truly said 

that he initiated the movement of the mod- 
ern intellect in its entirety, though he did not lead the 


THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 123 


Revival considered as a separate movement in this 
evolution. That service was reserved for Petrarch. 

There are spots upon the central watershed of 
Europe where, in the stillness of a sum- 

‘ The other 
mer afternoon, the traveller may listen source flow- 
to the murmurs of two streams—the one ing from 
hurrying down to form the Rhine, the other Faas 
to contribute to the Danube or the Po. Born within 
hearing of each other’s voices, and nourished by the 
self-same clouds that rest upon the crags about them, 
they are henceforth destined to an ever-widening sepa- 
ration. While the one sweeps onward to the Northern 
seas, the other will reach the shores of Italy or Greece, 
and mingle with the Mediterranean. To these two 
streamlets we might compare Dante and Petrarch, both 
of whom sprang from Florence, both of whom were 
nurtured in the learning of the schools and in the 
lore of chivalrous love. 

In speaking of Petrarch here, it is necessary to con- 
centrate attention upon his claims to be prerch 
considered as the apostle of scholarship, the theInter- 
inaugurator of the humanistic impulse of the PTete™ 
fifteenth century. We have nothing to do with his 
Italian poetry. The zme dedicated to Madonna 
Laura have eclipsed the fame of the Latin epic, philo- 
sophical discourses, epistles, orations, invectives, and 
dissertations which made Petrarch the Voltaire of his 
own age, and on which he thought his immortality 
would rest. To have foreseen a whole new phase of 
European culture, to have interpreted its spirit, and 
determined by his own activity the course it should 
pursue, is in truth a higher title to fame than the 
composition of the most perfect sonnets. He may 


124 THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 


continue to live in the thoughts of most people only as 
the poet of Lavra, while students will know how much 
the world owes to his humanistic ardor; and by that 
we mean the new and vital perception he gave of the 
dignity of man as arational being apart from theo- 
logical determinations, and the further perception that 
classic literature alone displayed human nature in the 
plenitude of intellectual and moral freedom. 

While regarding Petrarch as the first and, in some 
respects, the greatest of the humanists, 
we are bound to recognize the faults as 
well as the good qualities he shared with 
them. Foremost among these may be reckoned his van- 
ity, his eagerness to grasp the poet’s crown, his appetite 
for flattery, his restless change from place to place in 
search of new admirers, his self-complacent garrulity. 
To achieve renown by writing—to wrest for himself, 
even in his lifetime, a firm place among the immortals 
—became his feverish spur to action. He was never 
tired of praising solitude, and many years of his man- 
hood were spent in actual retirement at Vaucluse. 
Yet he only loved seclusion as a contrast to the society 
of Courts, and would have been most miserable if the 
world, taking him at his own estimate, had left him in 
peace. No one wrote more eloquently about equal 
friendship, or professed a stronger zeal for candid 
criticism. Yet he admitted few but professed admirers 
to his intimacy, and regarded his literary antagonists 
as personal detractors. 

We are, however, justified in hailing Petrarch as the 
The impetus Columbus of a new spiritual hemisphere, 
hegaveto the discoverer of modern culture. That he 


liberal : : : 
studies. knew no Greek, that his Latin verse was 


His weak 
points. 


THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 125 


lifeless and his prose style far from pure, that his 
contributions to history and ethics have been super- 
seded, and that his epistles are now only read by 
antiquaries, cannot impair his claim to this title. 
From him the inspiration needed to quicken curiosity 
and stimulate a zeal for knowledge proceeded. But for 
his intervention in the fourteenth century, it is possible 
that the Revival of Learning, and all that it implies, 
might have been delayed until too late. He died in 
1374. The Greek Empire was destroyed in 1453. 
Between those dates Italy recovered the Greek classics ; 
but whether the Italians would have undertaken this 
labor if no Petrarch had preached the attractiveness of 
liberal studies, or if no school of disciples had been 
formed by him in Florence, remains more than doubt- 
ful. The vast influence he immediately exercised, 
while Dante, though gifted with a far more powerful 
individuality, remained comparatively inoperative, 
proves that the age was specially prepared to receive 
his inspiration. 

Incited by Petrarch’s brilliant renown, Boccaccio, 
while still a young man, began to read the 
classical authors, bemoaning the years he had 
wasted in commerce and the study of the lawto please his 
father. From what the poet of the Decameron has himself 
told us about the origin of his literary enthusiasm, it ap- 
pears that Petrarch’s example was decisive in determin- 
ing his course. There is, however, another tale, reported 
by his fellow-citizen Villani, so characteristic of the age 
that to omit it in this place would be to sacrifice one of 
the most attractive legends in the history of literature. 
“* After wandering through many lands, now here, now 
there, for a long space of time. when he had reached at 


Boccaccio, 


126 THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 


last his twenty-eighth year, Boccaccio, at his father’s 
bidding, took up his abode at Naples in the Pergola. 
There it chanced one day that he walked forth alone for 
pleasure, and came to the place where Virgil’s dust lies 
buried. At the sight of this sepulchre he fell into long 
musing admiration of the man whose bones it covered, 
brooding with meditative soul upon the poet’s fame, 
until his thoughts found vent in lamentations over his 
own envious fortunes, whereby he was compelled against 
his will to give himself to things of commerce that he 
loathed. A sudden love of the Pierian Muse smote his 
heart, and, turning homeward, he abandoned trade, 
devoting himself with fervent study to poetry ; wherein 
very shortly, aided alike by his noble genius and his 
burning desire, he made marvellous progress. This 
when his father noted, and perceived that the heavenly 
inspiration was more powerful within his son than 
the paternal will, he at last consented to his studies, 
and helped him as best he could, although at first 
he tried to make him turn his talents to the canon 
law.” 

The hero-worship of Boccaccio, not only for the 
His admi- august Virgil, but also for Dante, the master 
ration of of his youth and the idol of his mature age, 
Petrarch, is the most amiable trait in a character 
which, by its geniality and sweetness, cannot fail to 
win affection. When circumstances brought him into 
personal relations with Petrarch, he transferred the 
whole homage of his ardent soul to the only man alive 
who seemed to him a fit inheritor of ancient fame. 
Petrarch became the director of his conscience, the 
master of his studies, the moulder of his thoughts upon 
the weightiest matters of literary philosophy. The 


THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 127 


friendship established between the poet of Vaucluse and 
the lover of Fiammetta lasted through more than twenty 
years, and was only broken by the death of the former 
a year before his own in 1375. 

Independently of his contributions to learning, 
Boccaccio occupies a prominent place in gis infu. 
the history of the Revival through the new fee on her. 
spirit he introduced into the vulgar litera- erature. 
ture. He was the first who frankly sought to jus- 
tify the pleasures of the carnal life, whose temper- 
ament, unburdened by asceticism, found a congenial 
element in amorous legends of antiquity. The romances 
of Boccaccio, with their beautiful gardens and sunny 
skies, fair women and luxurious lovers, formed a tran- 
sition from the chivalry of the early Italian poets to the 
sensuality of Beccadelli and Pontano. 

Another of Petrarch’s disciples, Giovanni Malpa- 
ghino, called from his birthplace Giovanni 
da Ravenna, exercised a more active per- 
sonal influence over the destinies of scholar- 
ship. While still a youth he had been employed by 
Petrarch as secretary and amanuensis. His general 
ability, clear handwriting, and enthusiasm for learning 
first recommended him tothe poet, who made use of 
him for copying manuscripts and arranging his familiar 
letters. In the course of this work, John of Ravenna 
became himself a learned man, acquiring a finer sense 
of Latinity than was possessed by any other scholar of 
his time. He could not long, however, content him- 
self with being even Petrarch’s scribe. He longed to 
gain the glory he was always reading of. Petrarch, 
incapable of comprehending that any honor was greater 
than that of being his satellite, treated his ambitious 


Giovanni da 
Ravenna. 


128 THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 


pupil like a wilful child. A quarrel ensued. Giovanni 
left his benefactor’s house, but want and misery drove 
him back to it for a time. Again the vagrant impulse 
came upon him, and for a season he filled the post of 
chancellor in the little principality of Carrara, The 
one thing, however, that he could not endure was the 
routine of fixed employment. He soon left Carrara, 
and took up the more congenial occupation of a wan- 
dering professor. His prodigious memory, by enabling 
him to retain, word for word, the text of authors he 
had read, proved of invaluable service to him in this 
career. | 
The name of the next student claiming our attention 
as a disciple of Petrarch brings us once more 
get back to Florence. Luigi Marsigli was amonk 
"of the Augustine Order of S. Spirito. 
Petrarch, noticing his distinguished abilities, had ex- 
horted him to make a special study of theology, and to 
enter the lists as a champion of Christianity against the 
Averrhoists, Under the name of Averrhoists in the four- 
teenth century were ranged all freethinkers who ques- 
tioned the fundamental doctrines of the Church, doubted 
the immortality of the soul, and employed their inge- 
nuityin a dialectic at least as trivial as that of the school- 
men, but directed to avery different end. Petrarch dis- 
liked their want of liberal culture as much as he abhorred 
their affectation of impiety. The stupid materialism 
they professed, their gross flippancy, and the idle pre- 
tence of natural science upon which they piqued them- 
selves, were regarded by him as so many obstacles to 
his own ideal of humanism. Against Averrhoes, “ the 
raging hound who barked at all things sacred and 
divine,” Petrarch therefore sought to stimulate the young 


THE REVIVAL OF LEARNINE. 129 


Marsigli. Marsigli, however, while he shared Petrarch’s 
respect for human culture, seems to have sympathized 
with the audacity and freedom of his proposed antag- 
onists. The monastery of S. Spirito became under his 
influence the centre of a learned society who met there 
regularly for disputations. 

A disciple of this Marsigli, aliens de’ Salutati, 
who entered in 1375 on the duties of Floren- 
tine Chancellor, the professed worshipper of Coluccio de’ 
Petrarch and the translator of Dante into *™™**™ 
Latin verse, was destined to exercise an important in- 
fluence in his own department as a stylist. Before he 
was called upon to act as secretary to the Signory of 
Florence, in his forty-sixth year, he had already ac- 
quired the learning and imbibed the spirit of his age. 
He was known as a diligent collector of manuscripts 
and promoter of Greek studies, as a writer on mythol- 
ogy and morals, as an orator and miscellaneous author. 
For the first time he introduced into public documents 
the gravity of style and melody of phrase he had 
learned in the school of classic rhetoricians. Gian 
Galeazzo Visconti is said to have declared that Salutati 
had done him more harm by his style than a troop of 
paid mercenaries. The epistles, despatches, protocols, 
and manifestoes, composed by their Chancellor for the 
Florentine priors, were distributed throughout Italy, 
and Ciceronian phrases were henceforth reckoned 
among the indispensable engines of a diplomatic 
armory. When the illustrious Chancellor died, in the 
year 1406, at the age of seventy-six, he was honored 
with a public funeral; the poet’s wreath was placed 
upon his brow, a panegyrical oration was recited, and 
a monument was erected to him in the Duomo. 


9 


130 THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 


What Salutati accomplished for the style of public 
documents, Gasparino da Barzizza effected 
for familiar correspondence. After teaching 
for several years at Venice and Padua, he 
was summoned to Milan by Filippo Maria Visconti, 
who ordered him to open a school in that capital. 
Gasparino made a special study of Cicero’s letters, and 
caused his pupils to imitate them as closely as possible, 
forming in this way an art of fluent letter-writing known 
afterwards as the ars familiariter scribendi. Epistolo- 
graphy in general, considered as a branch of elegant 
literature, occupied all the scholars of the Renaissance, 
and had the advantage of establishing a link of union 
between learned men in different parts of Italy. We 
therefore recognize in him the initiator, after Petrarch, 
of a highly important branch of Italian culture. 

We must close this brief retrospect with the advent 
of a man who played a part in the Revival 
of Learning only second to that of Petrarch. 
Manuel Chrysoloras, a Byzantine of noble 
birth, came to Italy during the pontificate of Boniface 
IX., charged by the Emperor Palzologus with the mis- 
sion of attempting to arm the states of Christendom 
against the Turks, His fame, as the most accomplished 
and eloquent Hellenist of his age, awoke a passionate 
desire in Palla degli Strozzi and Niccolo de’ Niccoli to 
bring him to Florence. Their urgent appeals to the 
Signory resulted in an invitation whereby Chrysoloras 
in 1396 was induced to fill the Greek chair in the 
university. This engagement secured the future of 
Greek erudition in Europe. The scholars who assem- 
bled in the lecture-rooms of Chrysoloras felt that the 
Greek texts, whereof he alone supplied the key, con 


Gasparino 
da Barzizza. 


Manuel Chry- 
soloras. 


THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 131 


tained those elements of spiritual freedom and intellect- 
ual culture without which the civilization of the modern 
world would be impossible. Nor were they mistaken 
in what was then a guess rather than acertainty. The 
study of Greek implied the birth of criticism, comparison, 
research ; it opened philosophical horizons far beyond 
the dream-world of the churchmen and the monks; it 
resuscitated a sense of the beautiful in art and litera- 
ture, and stimulated into activity the germs of science. 


VIII. 
THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS, 


a caracta sie was essentially the city of intelligence 
in modern times. Other nations have surpassed 
the Italians in their genius—the quality which gave a 
superhuman power of insight to Shakespeare, and an 
universal sympathy to Goethe. But nowhere else ex- 
cept at Athens has the whole population of a city been 
so permeated with ideas, so highly intellectual by nat- 
ure, so keen in perception, so witty and so subtle, as 
at Florence. 
This marvellous intelligence, which was her pride, 
burned brightly in a long series of historians 
The interest and annalists, who have handed down to 
and value of : rete 
their works, uS the biography of the city in volumes as 
remarkable for penetrative acumen as for 
definite delineation and dramatic interest. We pos- 
sess picture-galleries of pages in which the great 
men of Florence live again and seem to breathe 
and move, epics of the commonwealth’s vicissitudes 
from her earliest commencement, detailed tragedies 
and highly-finished episodes, studies of separate char- 
acters, and idylls detached from the main current of 
her story. The whole mass of this historical literature 
is instinct with the spirit of criticism and vital with ex- 
perience. ‘Trained in the study of antiquity, as well as 
in the council chambers of the republic and in the 


THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 138 


courts of foreign princes, they survey the matter of their 
histories from a lofty vantage ground, fortifying their 
speculative conclusions by practical knowledge, and 
purifying their judgment of contemporary events with the 
philosophy of the past. Owing to this rare mixture of 
qualities, the Florentines deserve to be styled the dis- 
coverers of the historic method for the modern world. 
The year 1300 marks the first development of histor- 
ical research in Florence. Two great writ- giovanni 
ers, Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Villani, Villani. 
at this epoch pursued different lines of study which de- 
termined the future of this branch of literature for the 
Italians. Giovanni Villani relates how, having visited 
Rome on the occasion of the Jubilee, when 200,000 pil- 
grims crowded the streets of the Eternal City, he was 
moved to the depths of his soul by the spectacle of the 
ruins of the discrowned mistress of the world. ‘“ When 
I saw the great and ancient monuments of Rome, and 
read the histories and the great deeds of the Romans, 
written by Virgil and by Sallust, by Lucan and by Livy, 
by Valerius and Orosius, and other masters of history, 
who related small as well as great things of the acts 
and doings of the Romans, I took style and manner 
from them, though, as learner, I was not worthy of so 
vast a work.” Like our own Gibbon, musing upon the 
steps of Ara Celi, within sight of the Capitol, and hear- 
ing within the monks at prayer, he felt the genius oct 
stir him with a mixture of astonishment and pathos. 
The result of this visit to Rome in 1300 was the 
Chronicle which Giovanni Villani carried, 
in twelve books, down to the year 1346. eee 
Two years afterwards he died of the plague, his brother 
and his work was continued on the same ®24nephew 


134 THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 


plan by his brother Matteo. Matteo in his turn 
died of the plague in 1362, and left the Chronicle 
to his son Filippo, who brought it down to the year 
1365. Of the three Villani, Giovanni is the greatest, 
both as a master of style and as an historical artist. 
This Chronicle is a treasure-house of clear and accurate 
delineation rather than of profound analysis. Not only 
does it embrace the whole affairs of Europe in annals 
which leave little to be desired in precision of detail 
and brevity of statement ; but, what is more to our pres- 
ent purpose, it conveys a lively picture of the internal 
condition of the Florentines, and the manners of the 
city in the fourteenth century. The work remains a 
monument, unique in medieval literature, of statistical 
patience and economical sagacity, proving how far in 
advance of the European nations were the Italians at 
this period. 
Dante’s aim was wholly different. Of statistics and 
of historical detail we gain but little from 
Dante's : : : 
method more his prose works. His mind was that of a 
philosophical philosopher who generalizes, and of a poet 
oath ieee who seizes salient characteristics, not that 
of an annalist who aims at scrupulous fidelity in 
his accounts of facts. In his treatise De Mon- 
archia we possess the first attempt at political specula- 
tion, the first essay in constitutional philosophy to 
which the literature of modern Europe gave birth ; while 
his letters addressed to the princes of Italy, the cardi- 
nals, the Emperor, and the Republic of Florence, are 
in like manner the first instances of political pam- 
phlets setting forth a rationalized and consistent sys- 
tem of the rights and duties of nations. In the De 
Monarchia Dante bases a theory of universal govern- 


i i 


THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 135 


ment upon a definite conception of the nature and the 
destinies of humanity. Amid the anarchy and discord 
of Italy, where selfishness was everywhere predomi- 
nant, and where the factions of the papacy and empire 
were but cloaks for party strife, Dante endeavors to 
bring his countrymen back to a sublime ideal of a 
single monarchy, a true émperium, distinct from the 
priestly authority of the Church, but not hostile to it, 
seeking rather sanction from Christ’s Vicar while afford- 
ing protection to the Holy See. The Epistles contain 
the same thoughts: peace, mutual respect, and obe- 
dience to a common head, the duty of the chief to his 
subordinates, and of the governed to their lord. 

While discussing the historical work of Dante and 
the Villani, it is impossible that another pjino com. 
famous Florentine should not arrest our no- pagni. 
tice, whose name has long been connected with the civic 
contests that resulted in the exile of Italy’s greatest 
poet from his native city. Yet it is not easy for a for- 
eign critic to deal with the question of Dino Compagni’s 
Chronicle—a question which for years has divided 
Italian students into two camps, which has produced 
a voluminous literature of its own, and which still 
remains undecided. 

Dino Compagni, whose “Chronicle” embraces the 
period between 1280 and 1312, took the 

eralaite The interest 
popular side in the struggles of 1282, sat ornis chron- 
as prior in 1289 and in 1301, and was icle apart 
chosen Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293. He Ppa 
was therefore a prominent actor in the upon its au- 
drama of those troublous times. He died thority. 
in 1324, two years and four months after the 
date of Dante’s death, and was buried in the Church 


136 THE FLORENIINE HISTORIANS. 


of Santa Trinitéa. He was a man of the same stamp 
as Dante; burning with love for his country, but still 
more a lover of the truth; severe in judgment, but be- 
yond suspicion of mere partisanship; brief in utter- 
ance, but weighty with personal experience, profound 
conviction, prophetic intensity of feeling, sincerity, and 
justice. As an historian he narrowed his labors to the 
field of one small but highly-finished picture. He un- 
dertook to narrate the civic quarrels of his times, and 
to show how the commonwealth of Florence was 
brought to ruin by the selfishness of her own citizens; 
nor can his “Chronicle,” although it is by no means a 
masterpiece of historical accuracy or of lucid arrange- 
ment, be surpassed for the liveliness of its delineation, 
the graphic clearness of its characters, the earnestness 
of its patriotic spirit, and the acute analysis which lays 
bare the political situation of a republic torn by fac- 
tions, during the memorable period which embraced 
the revolution of Giano della Bella and the struggles of 
the eri and Bianchi. If it were a forgery, the labor 
of concocting it must have been enormous. With all 
its defects the “ Chronicle” would still remain a master- 
piece of historical research, imagination, sympathy with 
bygone modes of feeling, dramatic vigor, and anti- 
quarian command of language. 

The historians of the first half of the. sixteenth 
Later histo- Century are a raceapart. Amid the universal 
rians, corruption of public morals, from’ the 
depths of sloth and servitude, when the reality of 
liberty was lost, when fate and fortune had combined 
to render constitutional reconstruction impossible for 
the shattered republics of Italy, the intellect of the 
Florentines displayed itself with more than its old vigor 


THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 137 


in a series of the most brilliant political writers who 
have ever illustrated one short but eventful period in 
the life of a single nation. That period is marked by 
the years 1494 to 1537. It embraces the two final 
efforts of the Florentines to shake off the Medicean 
yoke; the efforts of Savonarola in this cause, and his 
contest with Alexander VI.; the Church-rule of the 
Medicean Popes, Leo X. and Clement VII.; the 
disastrous siege during the pontificate of the latter, 
which we have still to narrate; and the final eclipse of 
liberty beneath the Spain-appointed dynasty of the 
younger Medicean line. The names of the historians 
of this period are: 
_ Born Died 
Niccolé Machiavelli. Pee tay eo N4Og 1527 


EO ROL Se li, KF) oe 4476 1556 
- Francesco Guicciardini . . . « 1482 1540 
eT oe ek a 405 111896 
Donato Giannotti . . +». «+. « 41492 1572 
Benedetto Varchi . . ec eAre 9 t BROS 1565 
Bernardo Segni. See He a me | Sem 1558 
Jacopo Pitti . ° ° . . » 1519 1589 


In these men the mental qualities which we 
admire in Dante, the Villani, and Compagni reappear, 
combined indeed in different proportions, tempered 
with the new philosophy and scholarship of the Re- 
naissance, and permeated with quite another mo- 
rality. — 

The biography of Machiavelli consists for the most 
part of a record of his public services to 
the State of Florence. He was born on May 
3, 1469, of parents who belonged to the prosperous 
middle class of Florentine citizens. His ancestry was 


Machiavelli. 


138 THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 


noble; for the old tradition which connected his descent 
with the feudal house of Montespertoli has been con- 
firmed by documentary evidence. His forefathers held 
offices of high distinction in the commonwealth ; and, 
though their wealth and station had decreased, 
Machiavelli inherited a small landed estate. 

In 1494, the date of the expulsion of the Medici, 
Machiavelli was admitted to the Chancery 
of the Commune asa clerk; and in 1498 
he was appointed to the post of chancellor 
and secretary to the Diect di libertad e pace. This 
place he held for the half of fifteen years—that is 
to say, during the whole period of Florentine freedom. 
His diplomatic missions, undertaken at the instance of 
the republic, were very numerous. Omitting those of 
less importance we find him at the camp of Cesare 
Borgia in 1502, in France in 1504, with Julius II. in 
1506, with the Emperor Maximilian in 1507, and again 
at the French court in 1510. To this department of 
his public life belong the despatches and elaziont 
which he sent home to the Signory of Florence, his 
monograph upon the massacre of Sinigaglia, his 
treatises upon the method of dealing with Pisa, Pistoja, 
and Valdichiana, and those two remarkable studies of 
foreign nations which are entitled ztratti delle Cose 
dell Alemagnaand Ritratti delle Cose di Francia. It 
was also in the year 1500 that he laid the first founda- 
tion of his improved military system. The political 
sagacity and the patriotism for which Machiavelli has 
been admired are nowhere more conspicuous than in 
the discernment which suggested this measure, and in 
the indefatigable zeal with which he strove to carry it 
into effect. Pondering upon the causes of Italian 


His official 
occupations. 


THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 139 


weakness when confronted with nations like the French 
and comparing contemporary with ancient history, 
Machiavelli came to the conclusion that the universal 
employment of mercenary troops was the chief secret of 
the insecurity of Italy. He therefore conceived a plan 
for establishing a national militia, and for placing the 
whole male population at the service of the state in times 
of war. The Florentines allowed themselves to be 
convinced, and on his recommendation they voted in 
1506 a newmagistracy for the formation of companies, 
the discipline of soldiers, and the maintenance of the 
militia in a state of readiness for active service. Of 
this board he became the secretary. 

It must be admitted that the new militia proved in- 
effectual in the hour of need. To revive His impris- 
the martial spirit of a nation, enervated by onment by 
tyranny and given over to commerce, merely teers 
by a stroke of genius, was beyond the force ment. 
of even Machiavelli. When Prato was sacked in 1512, 
the Florentines, destitute of troops, divided among 
themselves, and headed by the excellent but hesitat- 
ing Piero Soderini, threw their gates open to the Medici. 
Giuliano, the brother of Pope Leo, and Lorenzo, his 
nephew, whose statues sit throned in the immortality 
of Michael Angelo’s marble upon their tombs in San 
Lorenzo, disposed of the republic at their pleasure. 
On the ground of his being concerned in a conspiracy, 
Machiavelli was, in 1513, imprisoned in the Bargello, 
and tortured to the extent of four turns of the rack. 
It seems that he was innocent, for Leo X. released 
him by the act of amnesty passed upon his assuming 
the tiara; and Machiavelli immediately retired to his 
farm near San Casciano. The letters he wrote at this 


$40 THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 


time, in the desire for further employment, are not 
creditable to his memory. 

In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael 
1h apaealé Angelo Buonarroti may be said to have been 
toberein- the three greatest intellects produced by 
stated. = Florence. Dante, in exile and in opposi- 

tion, would hold no sort of traffic with her citizens. 
Michael Angelo, after the siege, worked at the Medici 
tombs for Pope Clement as a peace-offering for the for- 
tification of San Miniato; while Machiavelli entreats to 
be put “ to roll a stone,” if only he may so escape from 
poverty and dulness, He owed nothing to the Medici 
who had disgraced and tortured him ; yet what was the 
gift with which he came before them as a suppliant? 
A treatise, De Principatibus—in other words, the cele- 
brated Princife—which, misread it as Machiavelli’s 
apologists may choose to do, or explain it as the ra- 
tional historian is bound to do, yet carries venom in its 
pages. Remembering the circumstances under which 
it was composed, we are in a condition to estimate the 
proud humility and prostrate pride of the dedication. 
** Niccold Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo, son 
of Piero de’ Medici”: so runs the title. ‘“ Desiring to 
present myself to your Magnificence with some proof of 
my devotion, I have not found among my various furni- 
ture aught that I prize more than the knowledge of the 
actions of great men acquired by me through a long 
experience of modern affairs and a continual study of 
ancient. These I have long and diligently resolved 
and examined in my mind, and have now compressed 
into a little book which I send to your Magnificence. 
And though I judge this work unworthy of your pres- 
ence, yet I am confident that your humanity will cause 


THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 141 


you to value it when you consider that I could not 
make you a greater gift than this of enabling you in a 
few hours to understand what I have learned through 
perils and discomforts in a lengthy course of years... . 
If your Magnificence will deign, from the summit of 
your height, some time to turn your eyes to my low 
place, you will know how unjustly Iam forced to endure 
the great and continued malice of fortune.” The work 
so dedicated was sent in manuscript for the Magnifi- 
cent’s private perusal. It was not published until 1532, 
by order of Clement VII., after the death of Machiavelli. 

If we can pretend to sound the depths of Machia- 
velli’s mind at this distance of time, we may ieee 

. ‘ e ethics 

conjecture that he had come to believe the of his work 
free cities too corrupt for independence. “De Princi- 
The only chance Italy had of holding her ?*"™"* 
own against the great powers of Europe was by union 
‘under a prince, and if the power of the Church could 
not be neutralized, then with the Pope for an ally. 
He believed, accordingly, that the right way to attain 
a result so splendid as the liberation of Italy was to 
proceed by force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty acts 
of a political adventurer. The public ethics of the day 
had sunk to this low level. Success, he thought, by 
means of plain dealing was impossible. The game of 
statecraft could only be carried on by guile and violence. 
Even the clear genius of Machiavelli had been obscured 
by the muddy medium of intrigue inwhich he had been 
working all his life. We learn from Varchi that Machia- 
velli was execrated in Florence for his Principe, the poor 
thinking it would teach the Medici to take away their 
honor, the rich regarding it as an attack upon their wealth, 
and both discerning in it a death-blow to freedom. 


i 42 THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 


Not receiving from Lorenzo the employment he 

hoped for, we find Machiavelli, between 
His lectures . ° ‘ 
th the 1516 and 1519, taking part in the literary 
Florentine and philosophical discussions of the Flor- 
Academy, —entine Academy, which assembled at that 
period in the Rucellai Gardens. It was here that he 
read the “ Discourses on the First Decade of Livy ”—a 
series of profound essays upon the administration of 
the state, to which the sentences of the historian serve 
as texts. Having set forth in the Principe the method 
of gaining or maintaining sovereign power, he shows in 
the Discorsi what institutions are necessary to preserve 
the body politic in a condition of vigorous activity. 
We may therefore regard the Déscorsi as in some sense 
a continuation of the Principe. 

The seven books on the 47¢ of War may be referred 

with certainty to the same period of 
semi lik Machiavelli’s life. If we may venture to 

connect the works of his enforced leisure 
according to the plan above suggested, this treatise 
forms a supplement to the Principe and the Dazscorsi. 
Both in his analysis of the successful tyrant, and in his 
description of the powerful commonwealth, he had 
insisted on the prime necessity of warfare, conducted 
by the rulers in person. ‘The military organization 
,of a great kingdom is here developed, and Machia- 
velli’s favorite scheme for nationalizing the militia of 
Italy is systematically expounded. 

By this time Lorenzo had made up his mind to take 
Machiavelli again into favor; but the 
work and the missions he was called upon 
to undertake were of no importance. His 
great achievement in the last years of his life was the 


His Floren- 
tine History. 


THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 143 


Istorie Fiorentine. The commission for this work he 
received from Giulio de’ Medici, and in 1527, the year 
of his death, he dedicated the finished history to Clem- 
ent VII, This masterpiece of literary art, though it 
may be open to the charges of inaccuracy and super- 
ficiality, marks an epoch in the development of modern 
historiography. By applying the philosophical method 
to history, Machiavelli enriched the science of human- 
ity with a new department. His style is adequate to 
the matter of his work. Never were clear and definite 
thoughts expressed with greater precision in language 
of more masculine vigor. 

Machiavelli, according to the letter addressed by his 
son Pietro to Francesco Nelli, died of a 
dose of medicine taken ata wrongtime. He 
was attended on his deathbed by a friar, who received his 
confession. His private morality was but indifferent. 
His contempt for weakness and simplicity was undis- 
guised. His knowledge of the world and men had 
turned to cynicism. ‘The frigid philosophy expressed 
in his political essays, and the sarcastic speeches in 
which he gave a vent to his soured humors, made 
him unpopular. It was supposed that he died with 
blasphemy upon his lips, after turning all the sanctities 
of human nature into ridicule. Through these myths, 
as through a mist, we may discern the bitterness of 
that great disenchanted, disappointed soul. 

Francesco Guicciardini, in 1505, at the age of 
twenty-three, had already so distinguished 
himself as a student of law that he was ap- 
pointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the In- 
stitutes in public. But, preferring active to profes- 
sorial work, he began to practice at the bar, and soon 


His death. 


Guicciardini, 


144 THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 


ranked as an able advocate and eloquent speaker. 
This reputation, together with his character for gravity 
and insight, determined the Signoria to send him on 
an embassy to the court of Ferdinand of Aragon in 
1512. Thus Guicciardini entered on the real work of 
his life as a diplomatist and statesman. 

Returning to Florence, he was, in 1513, deputed to 
meet Leo X. at Cortona on the part of the 
republic. Leo, who had the faculty of dis- 
cerning able men and making use of them, 
took him into favor, and three years later appointed 
him Governor of Reggio and Modena, to which Parma 
was added in 1521. In 1523 he became Viceroy of 
Romagna, and in 1526 Lieutenant-General of the 
Papal Army. In consequence of this high commission, 
he shared in the humiliation attaching to all the 
officers of the League at the sack of Rome in 1527. 
He was, however, with the army, not as a general, but 
as a referee in the Pope’s interest, and as a reporter to 
the Vatican. In 1531 he was advanced to the gover- 
norship of Bologna, the most important of all the 
Papal lieutenancies. This post he resigned in 1534, 
on the election of Paul III., preferring to follow the 
fortunes of the Medicean princes at Florence. It was 
an unfortunate choice for his future career and reputa- 
tion. He had been declared a rebel in 1527 by the 
Florentine government for his adherence to the Medici, 
and this insult he had revenged on the citizens in 
1530, when deputed by Clement VII. to punish them. 
It was, therefore, now still more to his interest to 
maintain the bastard Alessandro in power, and he suc- 
cessfully defended him at the court of Charles V. at 
Naples, in 1535, when arraigned by the exiles for his 


His public 
engagements. 


THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 145 


unbearable despotism. ‘Two years later, after the as- 
sassination of Alessandro, having seated the young 
Cosimo, with the title of Duke, at the head of affairs, 
and finding that his own influence had waned, Guic- 
ciardini reluctantly retired to his villa, and in 1540 
died there at the age of fifty-eight. 

Turning now from the statesman to the man of 
letters, we find in Guicciardini one of the 
most consummate historians of any nation 
or of any age. The work by which he is 
best: known, the J/storia d’ /ialia, is one that can 
scarcely be surpassed for masterly control of a very 
intricate period, for the subordination of the parts to 
the whole, for calmness of judgment, and for philo- 
sophic depth of thought. Considering that he in this 
great work was writing the annals of his own times, 
and that he had to disentangle the ravelled skein of Ital- 
ian politics in the sixteenth century, these qualities are 
most remarkable. Yet Guicciardini in this work de- 
serves less commendation as a writer than asa thinker. 
His periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric 
is prolix and monotonous. 

Two other masterpieces from his pen, the Dialogo del 
keggimento di Firenze, and the Storia Fior- yig tater 
entina, have been only recently given to the works. 
world. In these writings we find him at his best. 
His style is more spontaneous ; his utterances are less 
guarded. At the same time the political sagacity of 
the statesman is revealed in all its vigor. 

The other writers we have mentioned carry on the 
Storia Fiorentina from the year 1527 to the Nardi, Nerli, 
year 1537. Nardi, who composed his his- gnq gian- 


tory in exile at Venice, where he died, notti. 
10 


His History 
of Italy. 


146 THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 


acted as secretary and advocate for Filippo Strozzi and 
the other exiles when, as we have mentioned, Guicci- 
ardini was pleading the cause of Alessandro de’ Medici 
before Charles V. Nerli alsotook part in the events of 
those troublous times, but on the wrong side, by mixing 
himself up with the exiles, and acting as aspy upon 
their projects. Giannotti was also an actor in the 
events of the siege, and afterwards appeared among 
the exiles of that time. 

Varchi, in whom the flame of patriotism burns 
Varchi, brightest, and who is by far the most copious 
Segni,and annalist of the period, was anative of Mont- 
Pitti. evarchi. Yet, as often happens, he was 
more Florentine than the Florentines ; and of the events 
which he describes he had for the most part been 
witness. Duke Cosimo employed him to write the 
history ; and it is acredit both to the prince and to the 
author that its chapters should be full of criticisms so 
outspoken, and of aspirations after liberty so vehement. 
Segni was nephew of the Gonfalonier Capponi, and 
shared the anxieties of the moderate Liberals during 
the siege of Florence. Lastly, Pitti was a member of 
the great house who contested the leadership of the 
republic with the Medici in the fifteenth century ; his 
zeal for the popular party and his hatred of the Padleschz. 
the Medicean faction, may still perhaps be tinctured 
with ancestral animosity. 

The literary qualities of these historians are very 

. different, and seem to be derived from essen- 
Acompari- .. : ; ; sae 
son oftheir tial differences in their characters. Pittiis 
various by far the most brilliant in style, concen- 
atyiehs trated in expression to the point of epigram, 
and weighty in judgment. Nardi, though deficient in 


THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 147 


some of the most attractive characteristics of the his 
torian, is invaluable for sincerity of intention and 
painstaking accuracy. The interest of his chronicle 
is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola, 
though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative 
nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes 
with Savonarola’s political and moral reforms, he raises 
a doubt about his inner sincerity, and does not approve 
of the attitude of his followers, the Pzagnont, Segni is 
far more lively than Nardi, while he is not less pains- 
taking to be accurate. Rarely have the entangled 
events of aspecially dramatic period been set forth 
more lucidly, more succinctly, and with greater elegance 
of style. He is deficient, when compared with Varchi, 
only perhaps in volume, minuteness, and that wonderful 
mixture of candor, enthusiasm, and zeal for truth 
which makes Varchi incomparable. His sketches of 
men, critiques, and digressions upon statistical details 
are far less copious than Varchi’s; but in idiomatic 
purity of language he is superior. Varchi had been 
spoiled by academic habits of composition. His 
language is diffuse and lumbering. He lacks the 
vivacity of epigram, selection, and pointed phrase. 
Nerli is altogether a less interesting writer than those 
that have been mentioned ; yet some of the particulars 
which he relates, about Savonarola’s reform of manners, 
for example, and the literary gatherings in the Rucellai 
gardens, are such as we find nowhere else. 

Too much time has hardly been spent in this survey 
of the annalists of one of the most interest- . 
° ; ‘ The value of 
ing periods in the fortunes of Florence. thege works 
For the student of history their narratives to the stu- 
have a value almost unique. They suggest “™" 


148 THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 


the possibilities of a true science of comparative his 
tory, and reveal a vivacity of the historic conscious 
ness which can be paralleled by no other nation. How 
different might be our conceptions of the vicissitudes 
of Athens between 404 and 338 B.c. if we possessed @ 
similar band of contemporary Greek authors ! 


a, 
LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


OTHING is more obvious to the student who 
has mastered the first difficulties caused by the 
intricacy of Italian history, than the fact that all the 
mental force of the nation was generated in Tuscany, 
and radiated thence, as from a centre of vital heat and 
light, over the rest of the peninsula. This is true of 
the revival of learning no less than of the fine arts and 
of the origin of science. From the republics of Tus- 
‘cany, and from Florence in particular, proceeded the 
impulse and the energy that led to fruitful results in all 
of these departments. 
In Florence, if anywhere in Italy, existed the con- 
ditions under which a republic of letters and : 

The life at 
of culture could be formed. She could Fhorence 
boast of a population of burghers excelling favorable to 
in intelligence and taste, owing less to ances- yi aah 
try than to personal eminence, devoting their energies to 
civic ambition worthy of the Romans, and to mental ac- 
tivity which reminds us of the ancient Greeks. Here, 
therefore, and here alone, was created a public capable 
instinctively of comprehending what is beautiful in art 
and humane in letters, a race of craftsmen and of scholars 
who knew that their labors could not fail to be appreci- 
ated, and a class of patrons who sought no better 


150 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


bestowal of their wealth than on those arts and sciences 
which dignify the life of man. 
What makes the part played by Florence in the his- 
. _ toryof learning the more remarkable is, that 
The leading ; uF; , 
men give the chiefs of the political factions were at 
itencour- the same time the leaders of intellectual prog. 
agement. ress. Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Cosimo 
de’ Medici, while opposed as antagonists in a duel 
to the death upon the stage of the republic, vied 
with each other in the patronage they extended to men 
of letters. Rinaldo was himself no mean scholar; and 
he chose one of the greatest men of the age, Tommaso 
da Sarzana, to be tutor to his children. We have already 
mentioned Palla degli Strozzi’s services in the cause of 
Greek learning. Besides the invitation he caused to 
be sent to Manuel Chrysoloras, he employed his wealth 
and influence in providing books necessary for the pros- 
ecution of Hellenic studies. | 
The work begun by Palla degli Strozzi was ably con- 
tinued by his enemy, Cosimo de’ Medici, 
Cosimode’ Pater Patriz. No Italian of his epoch 
Medici. ; } 
combined zeal for learning, and gener- 
osity in all that could advance the interests of 
arts and letters, more characteristically with political 
corruption and cynical egotism. Much of the influence 
which he transmitted to his descendants was due to his 
sympathy with the intellectual movements of the age. 
He had received a solid education ; and, though he was 
not a Greek scholar, his mind was open to the interests 
which in the fifteenth century absorbed the Florentines, 
He collected manuscripts, gems, coins, and inscriptions, 
employing the resources of his banking house, and en- 
gaging his commercial agents in this work. Painters 


LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. rst 


and sculptors, no less than scholars and copyists, found 
in him a liberal patron. The sums of money spent by 
him in building were enormous. Of these the most 
important were the monastery of S. Marco, the church 
of S. Lorenzo, and the abbey of Fiesole, while his villas 
at Careggi and Caffagiolo implied a further large ex- 
penditure. 

The chief benefit conferred by him on learning was 
the accumulation and the housing of large 5, «stitutes 
public libraries. During his exile (Oct. 3, public 
1433, to Oct. 1, 1434) he built the library "braries. 
of S. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, and after his 
return to Florence he formed three separate col- 
lections of MSS. While the hall of the library of 
S. Marco was in process of construction, Niccold de’ 
Niccoli died, in 1437, bequeathing his 800 MSS. to the 
care of trustees, of whom Cosimo was one. Heobtained 
the sole right to this collection by taking upon himself 
the heavy debts left by Niccoli. In 1441 the hall of S. 
Marco was finished, and 4oo of Niccoli’s MSS. were 
placed there, the other 400 being retained for the Medi- 
cean library. At the same time he spared no pains 
in adding to the Marcian collection. When the abbey 
of Fiesole was finished, he set about providing this also 
with a library suited to the wants of learned ecclesiastics. 
The two libraries thus formed for the monasteries of 
S. Marco and Fiesole, together with his own private 
collection, constitute the oldest portion of the present 
Laurentian Library. 

Cosimo’s zeal for learning was not confined to the 
building of libraries nor to book-collecting. The literary 
His palace formed the centre of a literary coterie 


; f db 
and philosophical society which united all Rear y 


152 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


the wits of Florence and the visitors who crowded 
to the capital of culture. The discernment of char- 
acter possessed by him in a very high degree not 
only enabled him to extend enlightened patronage 
to arts and letters, but also to provide for the future 
needs of erudition. Stimulated by the presence of the 
Greeks who crowded Florence during the sitting of 
the council in 1438, he formed a plan for encouraging 
Hellenic studies. It was he who founded the Pla- 
tonic Academy, and educated Marsilio Ficino, the son 
of his physician, of whom we shall speak presently, for 
the special purpose of interpreting Greek philosophy. 
Among the friends in the extourage of Cosimo, to 
whose personal influence the revival of learn- 
ing owed a vigorous impulse, mention must 
be first made of Niccolo de’ Niccoli. The 
part he took in promoting Greek studies has been already 
noticed, and we have seen that his private library formed 
the nucleus of the Marcian collection. His judgment in 
matters of style was so highly valued that it was usual 
for scholars to submit their essays to his eyes before 
they ventured upon publication. Thus Lionardo Bruni 
sent him his Lz/e of Cicero, calling him the “ censor of 
the Latin tongue.” Notwithstanding his fine sense of 
language, Niccoli never appeared before the world of 
letters as an author. His enemies made the most of 
this reluctance, averring that he knew his own inepti- 
itude ; while his friends referred his silence to an exqui- 
site fastidiousness of taste. Certainly his reserve, in an 
age noteworthy for arrogant display, has tended to com 
fer on him distinction. The position he occupied at 
Florence was that of aliterary dictator. All who needed 
his assistance and advice were received with urbanity, 


Niccolo de’ 
Niccoli. 





LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. {53 


He threw his house open to young men of parts, engaged 
in disputations with the curious, and provided the ill- 
educated with teachers. Foreigners from all parts of 
Italy paid him visits; the strangers who came to Flor- 
ence at that time, if they missed the opportunity of see- 
ing him, thought that they had wasted their time. The 
house where he lived was worthy of his refined taste 
and cultivated judgment; for he had formed a museum 
of antiquities—inscriptions, marbles, coins, vases, and 
engraved gems. There he not only received students 
and strangers, but conversed with sculptors and painters, 
discussing their work as freely as he criticised the essays 
of the scholars. What distinguished Niccold, therefore, 
was the combination of refinement and humane breed- 
ing with open-handed generosity and devotion to the 
cause of culture. 

Among the men of ability who adorned Florence at 
this period, no one stands forth with a more 
distinguished personality than Lionardo 
Bruni. In his boyhood at Arezzo, where his parents occu- 
pied a humble position, he used, as he tells us in his Com- 
mentaries, to gaze on Petrarch’s portrait, fervently desir- 
ing that he might win like laurels in the field of scholar- 
ship. At first, however, being poor and of no reputation, 
he was forced to apply his talents to the study of the law. 
From these uncongenial labors the patronage of Salu- 
tati and the influence of Chrysoloras saved him, Hav- 
ing begun to write for the public, his fame as a Latinist 
soon spread so wide that he was appointed Apostolic 
Secretary to the Roman Curia. After sharing the ill 
fortunes of John XXIII. at Constance, and serving 
under Martin V. at Florence, he was appointed to the 
Chancery of the Republic in 1427, a post which he 


Bruni. 


454 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


occupied until his death in 1443. His diplomatic letters 
were regarded as models of that kind of composition, 
and his public speeches, carefully prepared beforehand, 
were compared with those of Pericles. 

Among the compositions which secured his reputa- 
tion should first be mentioned the Latin 
Listory of Florence, a work unique of its 
kind at that time in Italy. The grateful 
republic rewarded their Chancellor by bestowing upon 
him the citizenship of Florence, and by exempting the 
author and his children from taxation. His medizval 
erudition was exercised in a history of the Gothic in- 
vasion of Italy, while his more elegant style found 
ample scope in Latin lives of Cicero and Aristotle, in a 
book of Commentaries on his own times, and in ten 
volumes of collected letters. ‘These original works were 
possibly of less importance than his translations from 
the Greek, which passed in his own age for models of 
sound scholarship as well as pure Latinity. If we 
consider that, in the midst of these severe labors, and 
under the pressure of his public engagements, he still 
found time to compose Italian lives of Dante and 
Petrarch, we shall understand the admiration uni- 
versally expressed by his contemporaries for his coms 
prehensive talents, and share their gratitude for 
services so numerous in the cause of learning. When 
he died, in 1443, the priors decreed him a public 
funeral, “after the manner of the ancients.” His 
corpse was clothed in dark silk, and on his breast was 
laid a copy of the Florentine History. ‘Thus attired, 
he passed in state to S. Croce, where Giannozzo 
Manetti, in the presence of the Signory, the foreign 
ambassadors, and the court of Pope Eugenius, pro 


His literary 
work, 


LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 155 


nounced a funeral oration and placed the laurel wreath 
upon his brow. The monument beneath which he 
reposes is an excellent specimen of Florentine sepul- 
chral statuary, executed by Bernardo Rossellino. 
Facing Bruni’s tomb in S. Croce is that of Carlo 
Aretino, wrought with subtler art and in 
a richer style by Desiderio da Settignano. 
Aretino, who succeeded Bruni in the Chancery of the Re- 
public, shared during his lifetime, as well as in the public 
honors paid him at his death, very similar fortunes. 
His family name was Marsuppini, and he was born of 
a good family in Arezzo. Having come to Florence 
while a youth to study Greek, he fell under the notice 
of Niccolé de’ Niccoli, who introduced him to the 
Medicean family, and procured him an engagement at 
ahigh salary from the Ufiziali dello Studio. At the 
time when he began to lecture, Eugenius IV. was 
holding his court at Florence. The cardinals and 
nephews of the Pope, attended by foreign ambassadors, 
and followed by the apostolic secretaries, mingled with 
burghers of Florence and students from a distance 
round the desk of the young scholar. Aretino’s read- 
ing was known to be extensive, and his memory was 
celebrated as prodigious. Yet on the occasion of his 
first lecture he far surpassed all that was expected of 
him. ‘“ Before a crowd of learned men,” says Vespa- 
siano, “‘ he gavea great proof of his memory, for neither 
Greeks nor Romans had an author from whom he did 
not quote.” He was soon made Apostolic Secretary, 
and then promoted to the Chancery of Florence. He 
was grave in manner, taciturn in speech, and much 
given to melancholy. His contemporaries regarded 
him as a man of no religion, and he was said to have 


Aretino. 


156 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


died without confession or communion. This did not 
prevent his being buried in S. Croce with ceremonies 
similar to those decreed for Lionardo Bruni. Matteo 
Palmieri pronounced the funeral oration, and placed the 
laurel on his brow. 

Matteo Palmieri, whom we have just mentioned, 
sprang from an honorable Florentine stock, 
and by his own abilities rose to a station of 
considerable public influence. He is principally famous 
as the author of a mystical poem called C7ttd di Vita, 
which, though it was condemned for its heretical opin- 
ions, obtained from Ficino for its author the title of Poea 
Theologicus. Palmieri claims a passing notice here 
among the humanists who acquired high place and 
honor by the credit of his eloquence and style. 

Giannozzo Manetti, whom we have seen at the tomb 
of Bruni, belonged to an illustrious house, 
and in his youth, like other well-born Floren- 
tines, was trained for mercantile affairs. At the age of 
five-and-twenty he threw off the parental control, and 
gave himself entirely to letters. His house and garden 
communicated with the monastery of S. Spirito, and, 
being passionately fond of disputation, he sought his 
chief amusement there in the debating society founded 
by Marsigli. Ambrozio Traversari was his master in 
Greek. Latin he had no difficulty in acquiring, and 
soon gained such facility in its exercise that even 
Lionardo Bruni is said to have envied his fluency. 
He was not, however, contented with these languages, 
and, in order to perfect himself in Hebrew, kept a 
Jew in his. own house. When he had acquired suf- 
ficient familiarity with Hebrew, he turned the arms 
supplied him by his tutors against their heresies, 


Palmieri. 


Manetti. 


ea ae = 


f 


LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 157 


basing his arguments upon such interpretations of texts 
as his superior philology suggested to him. The great 
work of his literary leisure was a polemical discourse, 
Contra Judeos et Gentes; for, unlike Aretino, he 
placed his erudition solely at the service of the 
Christian faith. Another fruit of his Hebrew studies 
was a new translation of the Psalms from the original. 
Manetti was far from being a mere student. During 
the best years of his life he was continually His official 
employed as ambassador to the republic at engage- 
Venice, Naples, Rome, and other courts of ™e2ts 
Italy. He administered the government of Pescia, 
Pistoja, and Scarparia in times of great difficulty, 
winning a singular reputation for probity and justice. 
On all occasions of state his eloquence made him in- 
dispensable to the Signory, while the lists of his writ- 
ings include numerous speeches upon various topics 


addressed to potentates and princes throughout Italy. 


He became at last so great a power in Florence that 
he excited the jealousy of the Medicean His ill-treat. 
party. They ruined him by the imposition ment by the 
of extravagant taxes, and he was obliged to Medici. 
end his life an exile from his native land. Flor- 
ence never behaved worse to a more blameless citi- 
zen; for Manetti, by his cheerful acceptance of 
public burdens, by his prudence in the discharge of 
weighty offices, by the piety and sobriety of his private 
life, by his vast acquirements, and by the single-hearted 
zeal with which he burned for learning, had proved 
himself the model of such men as might have saved the 
State, if safety had been possible. He retired to the 
court of Nicholas V., who had previously named him 
Apostolic Secretary ; and on the death of that Pope he 


158 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


sought a final refuge with Alfonso at Naples. There 
he devoted himself entirely to literature, translating the 
whole of the New Testament, and carrying his great 
controversial work against the Jews and Gentiles on- 
wards to completion. 

Ambrozio Traversari, Manetti’s master in Greek, was 
of a different stamp from those who felt the 
neo-pagan impulse of the classical revival; 
yet he owed political influence and a high place among 
the leaders of his age to humanistic enthusiasm. Born 
in Romagna, and admitted while yet a child into the 
Monastery degli Angeli at Florence, he gave early signs 
of his capacity for literature. At a time when knowl- 
edge of Greek was still a rare title to distinction, Tra- 
versari mastered the elements of the language and 
studied the Greek Fathers in the original. His cell 
became the meeting place of learned men, where Cosimo 
and Lorenzo de’ Medici, the stately Bruni, and the 
sombre Aretino, joined with Niccoli and Poggio in 
earnest conversation. 

It seemed as though he were destined to pursue a 
peaceful student’s life among his books; 
and for this career nature had marked out 
the little, meagre, lively and laborious man. 
To be eminent in scholarship, however, and to avoid 
the burdens of celebrity, was impossible in that age. 
Eugenius IV., while resident in Florence, was so 
impressed with his literary eminence and strength of 
character that he made him General of the Camaldolese 
Order in 1431; and from this time forward Traversari’s 
life was divided between public duties, for which he was 
scarcely fitted, and private studies that absorbed his 
deepest interests. He presented the curious spectacle 


Traversari. 


His public 
occupations. 


LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 159 


of a monk distracted between the scruples of the cloister 
and the wider claims of humanism, who showed one 
mood to his Order and another to his literary friends. 

These men—Niccoli, Bruni, Aretino, Manetti, and 
Traversari—formed the literary oligarchy 
who surrounded Cosimo de’ Medici, and 
through their industry and influence restored the 
studies of antiquity at Florence. A combination of 
external circumstances gave an impulse to this activity. 
Eugenius IV. had been expelled from Rome, and, as 
we have frequently had occasion to mention, had fixed 
his headquarters in Florence, whither, in 1438, he 
transferred the council which had first been opened at 
Ferrara for negotiating the union of the Greek and 
Latin Churches. The Emperor of the East, John 
Palzologus, surrounded by his theologians, of whom 
Gemistos Plethon was the most distinguished, with car- 
dinals and secretaries, now took up their quarters in the 
city of the Medici. A temporary building at Santa 
Maria Novella was erected for the sessions of the 
council, and for several months Florence entertained as 
guests the chiefs of the two great sections of Christen- 
dom. Unimportant as were the results, both political 
and ecclesiastical, of this council, the meeting of the 
Eastern and the Western powers in conclave vividly 
impressed the imagination of the Florentines, and com- 
municated a more than transient impulse to their intel- 
lectual energies. 

To pass on now to a later period, Cosimo, before his 
death in 1464, had succeeded in rendering 
his family necessary to the State of Florence. 
Both his son Piero, called by the Florentines 
Zi Gottoso, and his grandson Lorenzo, who gained the 


Eugenius IV. 


Piero de’ 
Medici. 


160 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


title by which Machiavelli had addressed him of the Mag- 
nificent, well understood the parts they had to play. 
Piero, who was of a sickly constitution, enjoyed his 
dignity for only five years, but he had strengthened the 
position and influence of his family by marrying his 
son Lorenzo to Clarice degli Orsini, of the princely 
Roman house. 

Though Lorenzo neglected the pursuit of wealth, 
Lorenzo de? Whereby Cosimo had raised himself from 
Medici. insignificance to the dictatorship of Flor- 
ence, he surpassed his grandfather in the use he 
made of literary patronage. Through his thorough 
and enthusiastic participation in the intellectual in- 
terests of his age, he put himself into close sym- 
pathy with the Florentines, who were glad to ac- 
knowledge for their leader the ablest by far of the 
men of parts in Italy. He possessed one of those rare 
natures, fitted to comprehend all knowledge and to 
sympathize with the most diverse forms of life. While 
he never for one moment relaxed his grasp on politics, 
among philosophers he passed for a sage, among men 
of letters for an original and graceful poet, among 
scholars for a Grecian sensitive to every nicety of 
Attic idiom, among artists for an amateur gifted with 
refined discernment and consummate taste. Pleasure- 
seekers knew in him the libertine, who jousted with the 
boldest, danced and masqueraded with the merriest, 
sought adventures in the streets at night, and joined 
the people in their carnival festivities. 

This, then, was the man round whom the greatest 
The scholars SCholars assembled, at whose table sat 
whoformed Angelo Poliziano, Cristoforo Landino, Mar- 


his entou- oa ise : rn . 
res °*"  silio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 


LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 161 


Leo Battista Alberti, Michael Angelo Buonarroti, 
Luigi Pulci. The mere enumeration of these names 
suffices to awake a crowd of memories in the minds of 
those to whom Italian art and poetry are dear. Lo- 
renzo’s villas, where this brilliant circle met for grave 
discourse or social converse, heightening the sober 
pleasures of Italian country life with all that wit and 
learning could produce, have been so often sung by 
poets and celebrated by historians, that Careggi, Caf- 
fagiolo, and Poggio a Cajano, are no less familiar to us 
than the studious shades of Academe. 

To speak first of Ficino. When he was a youth of 
eighteen he entered the Medicean household, 
and began to learn Greek in order that he 
might qualify himself for translating Plato into Latin. 
His health was delicate, his sensibilities acute ; the tem- 
per of his intellect, inclined to mysticism and theology, 
fitted him for the arduous task of unifying religion with 
philosophy. It would be unfair to class him with the 
paganizing humanists, who sought to justify their un- 
belief or want of morals by the authority of the classics. 
Ficino remained throughout his life an earnest Chris- 
tian. At the age of forty, not without serious reflec- 
tion and mature resolve, he took orders, and faithfully 
performed the duties of his cure. He was forty-four 
years of age when he finished the translation of Plato’s 
works into Latin. This was followed by a life of the 
philosopher, and with a treatise on the Platonic Doctrine 
of Immortality. The importance of his other contribu- 
tions to philosophy consists in the impulse he gave to 
Platonic studies. ‘That he did not comprehend - Plato, 
or distinguish his philosophy from that of the 
Alexandrian mystics, is clear in every sentence of his 

a) 


Ficino. 


162 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


writings. The age was uncritical, nor had scholars 
learned the necessity of understanding an author’s 
relation to the history of thought in general before 
they attempted to explain him. 

Among those we have mentioned who appeared at 
Pico della _LOrenzo’s receptions, in 1484, was a young 
Mirandolan man of princely birth and of striking 
beauty. “Nature,” wrote Poliziano, “seemed to have 
showered on this man, or hero, all her gifts. He was 
tall and finely moulded: from his face a something of 
divinity shone forth. Acute, and gifted with prodig- 
ious memory, in his studies he was indefatigable, in his 
style perspicuous and eloquent. You could not say 
whether his talents or his moral qualities conferred ou 
him the greater lustre. Familiar with all branches of 
philosophy, and the master of many languages, he 
stood on high above the reach of praise.” This was 
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, whose portrait in ths 
Uffizi Gallery, with its long brown hair and penetrat- 
ing gray eyes, compels attention even from those whe 
know not whom it is supposed to represent. He was 
little more than twenty when he came to Florence. 
His personal attractions, noble manners, splendid style 
of life, and varied accomplishments made him the idol 
of Florentine society ; and for a time he gave himself, 
in part at least, to love and the amusements of his age. 

But Pico was not born for pleasure. By no man 

was the sublime ideal of humanity, superior 
The dignity to physical enjo ts and dignified b 
ofhis life, t© Physical enjoyments g y 

intellectual energy—that triumph of the 
thought of the Renaissance—more completely realized. 
There is even reason to regret that, together with the 
follies of youth, he put aside the collection of his Latin 


LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 163 


poems which Poliziano praised, and took no pains to 
preserve those Italian verses, the loss whereof we de- 
plore no less than those of Lionardo da Vinci. While 
he continued to live as became a Count of Mirandola, 
he personally inclined each year to graver and more 
abstruse studies and to greater austerity, until at last 
the prince was merged in the philosopher, the man of 
letters in the mystic. 

Pico’s abilities displayed themselves in earliest boy- 
hood. His mother, a niece of the great yy. camp 
Boiardo, noticed his rare aptitude for study, ing and 
and sent him at the age of fourteen to Bo- Pity: 
1ogna. There he mastered not only the humanities, but 
also what was taught of mathematics, logic, philosophy 
and Oriental languages. He afterwards continued his 
education at Paris, the headquarters of scholastic the- 
ology. His powerful memory must have served him in 
good stead; it is recorded that a single reading fixed 
the language and the matter of what he studied on 
his mind forever. Nor was this faculty for retaining 
knowledge accompanied by any sluggishness of mental 
power. To what extent he relied on his powers of 
debate, as well as on his vast stores of erudition, was 
proved by the publication of the famous nine hundred 
theses at Rome in 1486. ‘These questions seem to 
have been constructed in defence of the Platonic mys- 
ticism which had already begun to absorb his attention. 

The philosophers and theologians who were chal- 
lenged to contend with him in argument had the whole 
list offered to their choice. Pico was prepared to 
maintain each and all of his positions without further 
preparation. Ecclesiastical prudence, however, pre- 
vented the champions of orthodoxy from descending 


164 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


intothe arena. They found it safer to prefer a charge of 
heresy against him, and his theses were condemned in 
a brief of Innocent VIII., dated August 3, 1486. It 
was not until June 18, 1493, that he was finally purged 
from the ban of heterodoxy by a brief of Alexander VI. 
During that long interval he suffered much uneasiness 
of mind, for even his robust intelligence quailed before 
the thought of dying under papal interdiction. That a 
‘man so pure in his life and so earnest in his piety 
should have been stigmatized as a heretic, and then 
pardoned, by two such Popes, is one of the curious 
anomalies of that age. 

To harmonize the Christian and classical tradition 
Hh was a problem that Manetti, as we have seen, 
is concep- : ; 
tion ofthe had crudely attempted. Pico approached it 
aly é in a more philosophical spirit, and resolved 

S* to devote his whole life to the task, Yet 
he was not intent so much on merely reconciling hostile 
systems of thought, or on confuting the errors of the 
Jews and Gentiles. He had conceived the great idea 
of the unity of knowledge; and having acquired the 
omne scibile of his century, he sought to seize the soul 
of truth that animates all systems. 

Chance brought him at this time into contact with a 
The exposi. J&W who had a copy of the Cadéa/a for sale. 
tionofhis Into this jungle of abstruse learning Pico 
pete fra plunged with all the ardor of his powerful 

ydeath. intellect. Asiatic fancies, Alexandrian myths, 
Christian doctrines, Hebrew traditions, are so won- 
derfully blended in that labyrinthine commentary 
that Pico believed he had discovered the key to his great 
problem, the quintessence of all truth. It seemed to 
him that the science of the Greek and the faith of the 


LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 165 


Christian could only be understood in the light of the 
Cabbala. Death, however, overtook him before the 
book intended to demonstrate this discovery could be 
written. He died at the age of thirty-one, on the day 
that Charles VIII. made his entry into Florence. 

As Pico was the youngest, so was Cristoforo Landino 
the oldest, member of the Medicean 
circle. He was born at Florence in 1424, 
nine years before Ficino, with whom he shared 
the duties of instructing Lorenzo in his boyhood. 
He obtained the Chair of Rhetoric and Poetry in 
1457, and continued till his death in 1504 to profess 
Latin literature at Florence. While Ficino and Pico 
represented the study of philosophy, he devoted 
himself exclusively to scholarship, annotating Horace 
and Virgil, and translating Pliny’s Vatural HHis- 
tories. A marked feature in his professorial labors 
was the attention he paid to the Italian poets. In 
1460 he began to lecture on Petrarch, and in 1481 he 
published an edition of Dante with voluminous com- 
mentaries. Though he is now best known in connec- 
tion with his Dantesque studies, one of his Latin works, 
the Camaldolese Discussions, will always retain peculiar 
interest for the student of Florentine humanism. This 
treatise is composed in imitation of the Ciceronian 
rather than the Platonic dialogues; the Zuscu/ans may 
be said to have furnished Landino with his model. 

The distinguished place allotted in this dialogue to 
Leo Battista Alberti, who is best known as 4.) pottista 
an architect, proves the singular regard in Alberti. 

which this most remarkable man was held at Flor- 
ence, where, however, he but seldom resided. His 
name will always be coupled with that of Lionardo 


andino. 


166 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


da Vinci ; for though Lionardo, arriving at a happiet 
moment, has eclipsed Alberti’s fame, yet both of them 
were cast in the same mould. Alberti, indeed, might 
serve as the very type of those many-sided, precocious, 
and comprehensive men of genius who only existed in 
the age of the Renaissance. Physical strength and 
dexterity were given to him at birth in ineasure equal 
to his mental faculties. His insight into every branch 
of knowledge seemed intuitive, and his command of the 
arts was innate. At the age of twenty he composed 
the comedy of Pzlodoxius, which passed for an an- 
tique, and was published by the Aldi as a work of Lep- 
idus Comicus in 1588. Of music, though he had not 
made it a special study, he was a thorough master, 
composing melodies that gave delight to scientific 
judges. He painted pictures, and wrote three books 
on painting ; practised architecture, and compiled ten 
books on this subject. Of his paintings, chiefly por- 
traits, nothing remains; and of his greatness as an 
architect we shall have more to say. 

In order to complete the picture of the Florentine cir- 
cle, we have in the last place to notice two 
men raised by the Medici from the ranks of 
the people. ‘I came to the republic, bare of all things, 
a mere beggar, of the lowest birth, without money, rank, 
connections, or kindred. Cosimo, the father of his 
country, raised me up by receiving me into his family.” 
So wrote Bartolommeo Scala, the miller’s son, who 
lived to be the Chancellor of Florence. The splen- 
dor of that office had been considerably diminished 
since the days when Bruni, Aretino, and Poggio 
held it; nor could Scala, as a student, bear com- 
parison with those men. His Latin history of the 


Seala. 


LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 167 


first crusade was rathera large than a great work, of 
which no notice would be taken if Tasso had not used 
it in the composition of his epic. Honors and riches, 
however, were accumulated on the Chancellor in such 
profusion that he grew arrogant, and taunted the great 
Poliziano with inferiority. 

Angelo Poliziano, whose name has been so often in- 
troduced, was born in 1454. This name, 5 isiano. 
so famous in Italian literature, is a Latin- 
ized version of his birthplace, Montepulciano. His 
father, Benedetto Ambrogini, was a man of some conse- 

quence, but of small means, who fell a victim to the 
enmity of private foes among his fellow-citizens, leaving 
his widow and five young children almost wholly unpro- 
vided for. This accounts for the obscurity that long 
enveloped the history of Poliziano’s childhood, and also 
for the doubts expressed about the surname of his family. 
At the age of ten he came to study in the University of 
Florence, where he profited by the teaching of Landino 
and Ficino. The precocity of his genius displayed 
itself early in Latin poems and Greek epigrams, and as 
early as the year 1470 inthe commencement of a Latin 
translation of Homer, which Aretino had attempted. 

The fame of this great undertaking, which for some 
unexplained reason did not extend beyond 43, pemark- 
the Fifth Book, attracted universal attention able scholar- 
to Poliziano. It is probable that Ficino *™?. 
first introduced him to Lorenzo, who received the 
young student into his own house and made himself 
responsible for his future fortunes. Before Poliziano 
reached the age of thirty, he professed the Greek and 
Latin literatures in the University of Florence, and re- 
ceived the care of Lorenzo’s children. If Lorenzo 


168 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


represents the statecraft of his age, Poliziano is no less 
emphatically the representative of its highest achieve- 
ments in scholarship. He was the first Italian to 
combine perfect mastery over Latin, and a correct 
sense of Greek, with a splendid genius for his native 
literature. 

The spirit of Roman literature lived again in Poli- 
Defects of Ziano. He wrote Latin as if it were a liv- 
style. ing language, not culling phrases from Cic- 
ero or reproducing the periods of Livy but trusting to 
his instinct and his ear with the confidence of con- 
scious power. Yet it must be conceded he was not care- 
ful to purge his style of obsolete words and far-fetched 
phrases, or to maintain the diction of one period in 
each composition. His fluency betrayed him into ver- 
biage, and his descriptions are often more diffuse than 
vigorous. Nor will he bear comparison with some more 
modern scholars on the point of accuracy. The merit, 
however, remains to him of having been the most copi- 
ous and least slavish interpreter of the ancient to the 
modern world. 

As a professor, none of the humanists achieved more ~ 
His success DPUilliant successes than Poliziano. Among 
asaprofes- his pupils could be numbered the chief 
cae students of Europe. Not to mention Ital. 
ians, it will suffice to record the names of Reuch- 
lin, Grocin, Linacre, and the Portuguese Tesiras, 
who carried each to his own country the culture 
they had gained in Florence. The first appear- 
ance of Poliziano in the lecture-room was not calculated 
to win admiration. Ill-formed, with eyes that had 
something of a squint in them, and nose of dispropor- 
tionate size, he seemed more fit to be a solitary scholar 





LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 169 


than the Orpheus of the classic literatures. Yet no 
sooner had he opened his lips and begun to speak 
with the exquisite and varied intonations of a singu- 
larly beautiful voice, than his listeners were chained to 
their seats. The ungainliness of the teacher was for- 
gotten; charmed through their ears and their intellect, 
they eagerly drank in his eloquence, applauding the 
improvisations wherewith he illustrated the spirit and 
intentions of his authors, and silently absorbing the 
vast and well-ordered stores of knowledge he so prodi- 
gally scattered. 

To complete this sketch, without touching upon the 
vast range of subjects which formed the i 

° ‘ : 5 ie His re- 

topic of his lectures and of his publications, gard for 
we are bound, in illustration of his charac- Lorenzo de’ 
ter, to add that Poliziano was deficient in ae 
the noble quality of self-respect. He flattered Lorenzo 
and begged for presents, in phrases that remind us of 
Filelfo’s prosiest epigrams. That a scholar should 

vaunt his own achievements and extol his patron to the 
skies, that he should ask for money and set off his 
panegyrics against payment, seemed not derogatory to 
a man of genius in the fifteenth century. At the same 
time it must be allowed that to overpraise Lorenzo 
from a scholar’s point of view would have been diffi- 
cult, while the affection that bound the student to his 
patron was genuine. Poliziano, who watched Lorenzo 
in his last moments, described the scene of his death in 
a letter, marked by touching sorrow, addressed to Anti- 
quari; and by the Latin monody which he left unfin- 
ished he proved that grief for his dead master could 
inspire his muse with loftier strains than any expecta- 
tion of future favors while he lived had done. 


170 LITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE. 


Two years after Lorenzo’s death Poliziano himself 
The gloomy died, dishonored and suspected by the 
Stancesof  ~/ 22&#ont. Savonarola, as we have seen, had 
hisdeath, swept away all the festive appliances and 
the light-hearted indulgences of Lorenzo’s holiday 
reign. Instead of rispetti and ballate, the refrain of 
Misereres filled the city, and the Dominican’s proph- 
ecy of blood and ruin drowned with its solemn rever- 
berations the loftier disquisitions of the advocates of 
knowledge. Poliziano’s lament for Lorenzo had, there- 
fore, become one for his own fate: ‘‘Oh that my head 
were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I 
might weep day and night! So mourns the widowed 
turtle dove; so mourns the dying swan; so mourns the 
nightingale.” But this at least of grace the gods al- 
lowed Poliziano, that he should die in the same year as 
his friend Pico della Mirandola, a few weeks before 
the deluge prophesied by Savonarola burst upon 
Italy. 


Xx. 
MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 


HY passing from Florence to Rome, we are struck with 
the fact that neither in letters nor in art had the papal 
city any real life of her own. Her intellectual enthusi- 
asms were imported; her activity varied with the per- 
sonal interests of successive Popes. Stimulated by 
the munificence of one Holy Father, starved by the 
niggardliness of another; petted and caressed by 
Nicholas V., watched with jealous mistrust by Paul II. ; 
thrust into the background by Alexander, and brought 
into the light by Leo—learning was subjected to rude 
vicissitudes at Rome. Very few of the scholars who 
shed lustre on the reigns of. liberal Pontiffs were 
Romans, nor did the nobles of the Papal States affect 
the fame of patrons. 

In spite of these variable conditions, one class of 
humanists never failed at Rome. During the », Dpeatie 
period of schisms and councils, when Pope for scholars 
and Anti-Pope were waging wordy warfare % Rome. 
in the courts of congregated Christendom, it was 
impossible to dispense with the services of prac- 
tised writers and accomplished orators. As compos- 
ers of diplomatic despatches, letters, bulls, and pro- 
tocols ; as disseminators of squibs and invectives ; as 
redactors of state papers; as pleaders, legates, ambas- 


372, MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES, 


sadors; and private secretaries—scholars swarmed 
around the person of the Pontiff. Men of acute intel- 
lect and finished style, who had absorbed the culture 
of their age, and could by rhetoric enforce what argu- 
ments they chose to wield, found, therefore, a good 
market for their talents at the court of Rome. They 
soon became a separate and influential class, divided 
from the nobility by their birth and foreign connections, 
and from the churchmen by their secular status and 
avowed impiety, yet mingling in society with both, and 
trusting to their talents to support their dignity. 

It was from Florence that Rome received her intel- 
The Papal lectual stimulus. The connection began in 
ee Sa 1402, when Boniface IX. appointed Poggio 
ea trom to the post of Apostolic Secretary, which he 
Florence. held for fifty years. In 1405, Lionardo 
Bruni obtained the same office from Innocent VII. 
The powerful personality of these men, in whom 
the energies of the humanistic revival were con- 
centrated, impressed the Roman Curia with a stamp 
it never lost. During the insignificant pontificate 
of Martin V., while the Curia resided in exile at 
Florence, the chain which was binding Rome to the 
city of Italian culture continued to gain strength. 
The result of all the discords which rent the Church in 
the first half of the fifteenth century was to Italianize 
the Papal See; nor did anything contribute to this end 
more powerfully than the Florentine traditions of three 
successive Popes—Martin V., Eugenius IV., and 
Nicholas V. 

Eugenius was a Venetian of good family, who in- 


herited considerable wealth from his father. 


E ius IV. c 
par In 1431 he was raised to the Papacy, but 


a sy 


MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 173 


the disturbed state of Rome obliged him to quit the 
Vatican in mean disguise, and to seek safety by flight 
from Ostia. He spent the greater portion of his life 
in Tuscany, as we have seen; and, though he did not 
share the passion of his age for learning, the patronage 
which he extended to scholars was substantial and im- 
portant. Giovanni Aurispa received from him the title 
of Apostolic Secretary, and was appointed interpreter 
between the Greeks and Italians at the council of the 
two Churches. Even the paganizing Aretino was en- 
rolled upon the list of papal secretaries, while Filelfo 
and Decembrio, who added lustre at this epoch to the 
court of Milan, were invited by Eugenius with highly 
flattering promises. 

_ More closely attached to his court than those who 
have been mentioned were Maffeo Begio, Flavio Bi- 
the poet, and Flavio Biondo, one of the 4° 
soundest and most conscientious students of the time. 
Though Biondo had but little Greek, and could boast 
of no beauty of style, his immense erudition raised him 
to high rank among Italian scholars. The work he 
undertook was to illustrate the antiquities of Italy in a 
series of historical, topographical, and archzological 
studies. In estimating the value of Biondo’s contribu- 
tions to history, we must remember that he had no 
previous compilations whereon to base his own re- 
searches. His History of the Decline and Fall of .the 
Roman L£mpire, conceived in an age devoted to stylis- 
tic niceties, and absorbed by the attractions of renas- 
cent Hellenism, inspires our strongest admiration. Yet 
its author failed in his lifetime to win the distinctions 
he deserved. Though he held the office of Apostolic 
Secretary under four Popes, his marriage stopped the 


174 MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 


way to ecclesiastical preferment. Eugenius could ap- 
preciate a man of his stamp better than Nicholas V., 
whose special tastes inclined to elegant humanism rather 
than to ponderous erudition. 

The lives of all the humanists illustrate the honors 
and the wealth secured by learning for her 
votaries in the Renaissance. No example, 
however, is so striking as that furnished by the biog- 
raphy of Nicholas V., of whose measures to add to 
the power and beauty of Rome we have already spoken. 
Tommaso Parentucelli was born at Pisa in 1398. 
While he was still an infant, his parents, in spite of their 
poverty and humble station, which might have been 
expected to shield them from political tyranny, were 
exiled to Sarzana; and at the age of nine he lost his 
father at that place. 

The young Tommaso found means to go to the Uni- 
Hiseduce- Versity of Bologna, and after six years’ resi- 
tion and dence his destitute means led him to seek 
early life. work in Florence. He must already have 
acquired some reputation, since Rinaldo degli Albizzi 
received him as house-tutor to his children for one 
year, at the expiration of which time he entered the 
service of Palla degli Strozziina similar capacity. The 
money thus obtained enabled him to return to Bo- 
logna, and to take his degree as Doctor of Theology at 
the age of twenty-two. He was now fully launched in 
life. The education he had received at Bologna quali- 
fied him for office in the Church, while his two years’ 
residence in Florence had rendered him familiar with 
men of polite learning and of gentle breeding. Niccolo 
degli Albergati, Archbishop of Bologna, became his 
patron, and appointed him controller of his household, 


Nicholas V. 


MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 175 


Albergati was one of the cardinals of Eugenius IV., a 
man of considerably capacity, and alive to the intel- 
lectual interests of his age. When he followed the papal 
court to Florence, Tommaso attended him; and here 
began the period which was destined to influence his 
subsequent career. He soon became familiar with Cosi- 
mo de’ Medici, and no meetings of the learned were 
complete without him. 

Soon after the death of Albergati in 1443, Eugenius 

promoted him to the See of Bologna; a 4,., oot 
cardinal’s hat followed within a few months; rise to the 
and in 1447 he was elected Pope of Rome. Papacy: 
So sudden an elevation from obscurity and poverty to 
the highest place in Christendom has rarely happened ; 
nor is it easy even now to understand what combina- 
tions of unsuccessful intrigues among the princes of the 
Church enabled this little, ugly, bright-eyed, restless- 
minded scholar to creep into S. Peter’s seat. 

The rejoicings with which the humanists hailed the 
elevation of one of their own number tothe wm, satisfac. 
papal throne may be readily imagined ; tion given to 
nor were their golden expectations, founded S*holars. 
on a previous knowledge of his liberality in all 
things that pertained to learning, destined to be dis- 
appointed. The most permanent benefit conferred 
by Nicholas V. on Roman studies was the foundation 
of the Vatican library, on which he spent about 40,000 
scudi, forming a collection of some 5,000 volumes, 

The profuse liberality of Nicholas towards the schol 

ars whom he employed in translating Greek 5... ora1 
works into Latin brought him into relation treatment 
with the whole learned world of Italy. °f them. 
Among the humanists who resided in his court at 


176 MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 


Rome, mention must be made of Lorenzo Valla, wha 
was appointed Apostolic Scriptor in 1447, and opened 
a school of eloquence in 1450; and of Piero Candido 
Jecembrio, who also was employed; but about whom 
we shall hear more in connection with scholarship at 
Naples and Milan. Our attention must now be turned 
toa man who, even more than Nicholas himself, might 
claim the right to give his own name to this age of 
learning. ’ 

Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini is better known 
in the annals of literature as Poggio Fior- 
entino, though he was not made a burgher 
of Florence until late in life. Born in 1380 at Ter 
' ranova, a village of the Florentine contado, he owed his 
education to Florence. During his youth he supported 
himself by copying MSS. for the Florentine market. 
Coluccio Salutati and Niccolo de Niccoli befriended the 
young student, who entered as early as the year 1402 
or 1403 into the Papal Chancery. Though Poggio’s 
life for the following half century was spent in the 
service of the Roman Curia, he refused to take orders 
in the Church, and remained at heart a humanist. His 
duties and his tastes alike made him a frequent — 
traveller, and not the least of the benefits conferred 
by him upon posterity are his pictures of foreign 
manners. 

In literature he embraced the whole range of con- 
His great temporary studies, making his mark as a 
ability and public orator, a writer of rhetorical treatises 
learning. and dialogues, a panegyrist of the dead, a 
violent impeacher and impugner of the living, a 
translator from the Greek, an elegant epistolog- 
rapher, a grave historian, and a facetious compiler of 


Poggio. 


MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 177 


anecdotes and epigrams. He possessed a style at once 
easy and pointed, correct in diction, and varied in 
cadence, equally adapted for serious discourse and 
witty trifling, and not less formidable in abuse than 
delicate in flattery. His controversial writings passed 
for models of distinctive eloquence, his satires on the 
clergy for masterpieces of sarcastic humor, his Floren- 
tine History for a supreme achievement in the noblest 
Latin manner. Yet the whole of this miscellaneous 
literature seems coarse and ineffective to the modern 
taste. We read it, not without repugnance, in order 
to obtain an insight into the spirit of the author’s 
age. 

Poggio, next to Filelfo, was the most formidable 
gladiator in that age of literary duellists. whe ewes 
““In his invectives he displayed such ve- of his in- 
hemence,” writes Vespasiano, “that the Vective 
whole world was afraid of him.” Even Alfonso of 
Naples found it prudent to avert his anger by a 
bribe; and the overtures made to him by Filippo 
Maria Visconti, with the consideration he received 
from Cosimo de’ Medici, testified to the desire of 
princes for the goodwill of a spiteful and unscrupu- 
lous pamphleteer. His quarrel with Filelfo, which was 
more personal than literary, extended over many years}; 
when, having heaped upon each other all the insults 
it is possible for the most corrupt imagination to con- 
ceive, they joined hands and rested from the contest. 
The History of the Hlorentine Republic, written in con- 
tinuation of Lionardo Aretino’s, occupied the closing 
years of his life. He left it still unfinished in the year 
1459, when he died and was huried in the church of 
Santa Croce. 7 

12 


af 


178 MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 


Any survey of the court of Nicholas V. would be 
Cardinal incomplete without some notice of the Car- 
Bessarion. dinal Bessarion. Early in life he rose to 
high station in the Greek Church, and attended 
the Council of Florence as Archbishop of Nicea. 
Eugenius IV., by making him a cardinal in 1439, 
converted him to the Latin faith; and, as it so hap- 
pened, he missed the Papacy almost by an accident 
thirty-two years later. His palace at Rome became 
the meeting-place of scholars of all nations, where 
refugee Greeks in particular were sure of finding 
hearty welcome. 

The fortunes of Roman scholarship kept varying 
Th with the personal tastes of each succes- 

efortunes . : : 
of scholar- sive Pope. Calixtus III. differed wholly 
shipfollow from his predecessor, Nicholas V. Learned 
the charac- . ° . 
ter of sue- in theology and medizval science, he was 
cessive dead to the interests of humanistic liter- 
rAd ie ature. Vespasiano assures us that, when 
he entered the Vatican Library and saw its Greek and 
Latin authors in their red and silver bindings, instead of 
praising the munificence of Nicholas, he exclaimed: 
“‘ Behold whereon he spent the substance of the Church 
of God!” neas Sylvius Piccolomini, on the other 
hand, ranked high among the humanists. As an ora- 
tor, courtier, state secretary, and man of letters, he 
shared the general qualities of the class to which he 
belonged. While a fellow-student of Beccadelli at 
Siena, he freely enjoyed the pleasures of youth, and 
thought it no harm to compose novels in the style of 
Longus and Achilles Tatius. These stories, together 
with his familiar letters, histories, cosmographical 
treatises, rhetorical 4isquisitions, apophthegms, and 


Me 


MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 149 


commentaries, written in a fluent and picturesque Latin 
style, distinguished him for wit and talent from the 
merely laborious students of his age. A change, how- 
ever, came over him when he assumed the tiara with 
the title of Pius II. Learning in Italy owed but little 
to his patronage, and, though he strengthened the 
position of the humanists at Rome by founding the 
College of Abbreviators, he was more eager to defend 
Christendom against the Turk than to make his See 
the capital of culture. Paul II. was chiefly famous for 
his persecution of the Roman Platonists, as we have 
already noticed; and Sixtus IV., though he deserves to 
be remembered as the Pontiff who opened the Vatican 
Library to the public, plays no prominent part in the 
history of scholarship. Of Innocent VIII. nothing 
need be said ; nor will any student of history expect to 
find it recorded that Alexander VI. wasted money on 
the patronage of learning. 

Under these Popes humanism had to flourish, as 
best it could, in the society of private indi- 

: : e acad- 
viduals, Accordingly, we find the Roman emy ofJulins 
scholars forming among themselves acad- Pomponius 
emies and learned circles. Of these the “™™* 
most eminent took its name from its founder, Julius 
Pomponius Lztus. He was a bastard of the princely 
house of the Sanseverini, to whom, when he became 
famous and they were anxious for his friendship, he 
penned the celebrated epistle : “ Pomponius Lzetus to 
his kinsmen and relatives, greeting. What you ask 
cannot be. Farewell.” Pomponius derived his scholar- 
ship from Valla, and devoted all his energies to Latin 
literature ; refusing, it is even said, to learn Greek, lest 
it should distract him from his favorite studies. Men 


¥ 


180 MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 


praised in him a second Cato for sobriety of conduct, 
frugal diet, and rural industry. The grand mansions 
of the prelates had no attractions for him, He pre- 
ferred his own modest house upon the Esquiline, his 
garden on the Quirinal. His celebrity was chiefly 
acquired by his forming an academy for the avowed 
purpose of prosecuting the study of Latin antiquities, 
and promoting the adoption of antique customs into 
modern life. It is only from the language in which its 
members refer to Lztus that we gain a due notion of 
his influence; for he left but little behind him as an 
author. He lived on into the papacy of Alexander, 
and died in 1498 at the age of seventy. His corpse 
was crowned with a laurel wreath in the church of 
Araceli, and buried in S. Salvator in Lauro. 

In passing down to Naples, we find a marked change 
The position in the external conditions under which 
ofscholars literature flourished. Men of learning at 
at Naples. the courts of Italy occupied a position 
different from that of their brethren in the Papal 
Chancery. ‘They had to suit their habits to the cus- 
toms of the court and camp, to place their talents at 
the service of their patron’s pleasure, to entertain him 
in his hours of idleness, to frame compliments and 
panegyrics, and to repay his bounty by the celebration 
of his deeds in histories and poems. ‘Their footing was 
less official, more subject to the temper and caprices 
of the reigning sovereign, than at Rome; while the 
peculiar advantages, both political and social, which, 
even under the sway of the Medicean family, made 
Florence a real republic of letters, existed in no other 
town in Italy. 


MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 181 


Each of the dynasties which held the throne of the 
Two Sicilies could boast a patron of litera- 
ture. Robert of Anjou was proud to call pak sigs 
himself the friend of Petrarch, and Boc- given by Al- 
_caccio found the flame of inspiration at his fonso. 
court. After making all deductions for the flattery 
of official historiographers, it is clear that Alfonso of 
Aragon found his most enduring satisfaction in the 
company of students, listening to their debates on 
points of scholarship, attending their public lectures, 
employing them in the perusal of ancient poets and 
historians, insisting on their presence in his camp, and 
freely supplying them with money for the purchase of 
books, and for their maintenance while engaged in 
works of erudition. 

Among the humanists who stood nearest to the per- 
son of this monarch, Antonio Beccadelli, 
called from his birthplace Il Panormita, 
deserves the first place. Born at Palermo in 1394, 
he received his education at Siena, where he was 
a fellow-student with Aineas Sylvius Piccolomini, 
afterwards Pius II. The city of Siena was noto- 
rious throughout Italy for luxury of living. Here, 
therefore, it may be presumed that Beccadelli in 
his youth enjoyed the experiences which he after- 
wards celebrated in Hermaphroditus. Nothing is 
more striking in that amazing collection of elegies 
than the frankness of their author, the free and liberal 
delight with which he dwells on shameless sensualities, 
and the pride with which he publishes his own name to 
the world. Dedicated to Cosimo de’ Medici, welcomed 
with applause by the gray-headed Guarino da Verona, 
extolled to the skies by Antonio Losco, eagerly sought 


Beecadelli, 


+ 


182 MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 


after by Bartolommeo, Bishop of Milan,—this book, 
which Strato and Martial might have blushed to own, 
passed from copyist to copyist, from hand to hand. 
When the Emperor Sigismund crowned Beccadelli poet 
at Siena in 1433, he only added the weight of Imperial 
approval to the verdict of the lettered public. 

The Church could not, however, tolerate the scandal. 
Becomes no- Lhe Minorite friars denounced the Aer 
recipi rich, maphroditus from their pulpits and burned 
spected. it, together with portraits of the poet, on the 
public squares of Bologna, Milan, and Ferrara. Eu- 
genius IV. proscribed the reading of it under penalty 
of excommunication. Yet all this made little difference 
to Beccadelli’s reputation. He lectured with honor 
at Bologna and Pavia, received a stipend from the 
Visconti, and in 1435 was summoned to the court of 
Naples. Alfonso raised him to the rank of noble, and 
continually employed him near his person, enjoying his 
wit and taking special delight in his readings of classic 
authors, As official historiographer, Beccadelli com- 
mitted to writing the memorable deeds and sayings of 
his royal master. As ambassador and orator, he repre- 
sented the king at foreign courts. As tutor to the 
Crown Prince, Ferdinand, he prepared a sovereign for 
the state of Naples. This favor lasted till the year 
1471, when he died, old, rich, and respected, in his 
lovely villa by the Bay of Naples. A more signal 
instance of the value attached in this age to pure 
scholarship, irrespective of moral considerations, can- 
not be adduced. 

Yet the position of Lorenzo Valla, at the same court, 

is even more remarkable. While Beccadelli 


shen urged the levity of youth in extenuation of 





MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 183 


his heathenism, and spoke with late regret of his past fol- 
lies, Valla showed the steady front of a deliberate critic, 
hostile at all points to the traditions and the morals of 
the Church. The parents of this remarkable man were 
natives of Piacenza, though, having probably been born 
at Rome, he assumed to himself the attribute of Roman, 
At the age of twenty-four he tried to get the post of 
Apostolic Secretary, but without success. In 1431 we 
hear of him at Pavia, and at this period he became the 
supreme authority on points of Latin style in Italy by 
the publication of his Evegantiz. ‘True to his own 
genius, Valla displayed in this masterly treatise the 
qualities that gave him a place among the scholars of 
his day. 

When Alfonso invited Valla to Naples in 143%, 
giving him the post of private secretary, wy. attacks 
together with the poet’s crown, he must on the 
have known the nature of the man who Papacy. 
was to play so prominent a part in the history of free 
thought. It is not improbable that the feud between 
the house of Aragon and the Papal See, which arose 
from Alfonso’s imperfect title to the throne of Naples, 
and was embittered by the intrigues of the Church, 
_ disposed the king to look with favor on the uncom- 
promising antagonist of Papacy. At all events, Valla’s 
treatise on Constantine's Donation, which appeared in 
1440, assumed the character of a political pamphlet. 
The exordium contained fierce personal abuse of 
Eugenius IV. and Cardinal Vitelleschi. The body of 
the tract destroyed the fabric of lies which had imposed 
upon the Christian world for centuries. The peroration 
ended with a menace. Worse chastisement was in 
store for a worldly and simoniacal priesthood, if the 


» 


184 MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 


Popes refused to forego their usurped temporalities, 
and to confess the shame that criticism had unmasked. 
War to the death was thus declared between Valla and 
Rome. The storm his treatise excited raged at first so 
wildly that Valla thought it prudent to take flight. He 
crossed the sea to Barcelona, and remained there a 
short while, until, being assured of Alfonso’s protec- 
tion, he once more returned to Naples. From beneath 
the shield of his royal patron he now continued to shoot 
arrow after arrow at his enemies, affirming that the 
letter of Christ to Abgarus, reported by Eusebius, was 
a palpable forgery; exposing the bad Latin style of 
the Vulgate; accusing S. Augustine of heresy on 
the subject of predestination, and denying the authority 
of the Apostles’ Creed. 

The friars, whom Valla attacked with frigid scorn, 
He yields and whose empire over the minds of men he 
nothing to was engaged in undermining, could not be 
outery. expected to leave him quiet. Sermonsfrom 
all the pulpits of Italy were launched at the heretic 
and heathen ; the people were taught to loathe him as 
a monster of iniquity; and, finally, a Court of Inquisi- 
tion was opened, at the bar of which he was summoned 
to attend. To the interrogatories of the inquisitors 
Valla replied that “he believed as Mother Church 
believed: it was quite true that she Avzew nothing ; yet 
he believed as she believed.” ‘That was all they could 
extract from the disdainful scholar, who, after openly 
defying them, walked away to the king and besought 
him to suspend the sitting of the court. Alfonso told 
the monks that they must leave his secretary alone, 
and the process was dropped. 





MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 185 


On the death of Eugenius, Nicholas V. summoned 
Valla to Rome, not to answer for his her- Called by 
esies and insults at the papal bar, but to Nicholas 
receive the post of Apostolic Writer, with te Rome. 
magnificent appointments. The entry of Valla into the 
Roman Curia, though marked by no external ceremony, 
was the triumph of humanism over orthodoxy and 
tradition. We need not suppose that Nicholas was 
seeking to bribe a dangerous antagonist to silence. 
He simply wanted to attach an illustrious scholar to his 
court, and to engage him in the task of translating from 
the Greek. To heresy and scepticism he showed the 
indifference of a tolerant and enlightened spirit. With 
the friars he had nothing whatever in common. The 
attitude assumed by Nicholas on this occasion illustrates 
the benefit which learning in the Renaissance derived 
from the worldliness of the Papacy. It was not until 
the schism of the Teutonic Churches, and the intrusion 
of the Spaniards into Italy, that the court of Rome 
consistently adopted a policy of persecution and 
repression. The rest of Valla’s biography is taken up 
with his quarrels with Poggio and other men of mark, 
He died in 1457. 

While the academy of Pomponius Letus flourished 
at Rome, that of Naples was no less active 
under the presidency of Jovianus Pon- adnety of 
tanus. When death had broken up the Jovianus 
brilliant circle surrounding Alfonso the Mag- ehivsery oe 
nanimous, Pontanus assumed the leadership of learned 
men in Naples, and gave the formality of a club 
to what had previously been a mere reunion of culti- 
vated scholars. Born in 1426, he settled there in his 
early manhood, and Beccadelli introduced him to his 


186 MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES. 


royal patrons. During the reigns of Ferdinand I, 
Alfonso II., and Ferdinand II., Pontanus held the post 
of secretary, tutor, and ambassador, accompanying 
his masters on their military expeditions and negotiat- 
ing their affairs at the Papal court. When Charles 
VIII. entered Naples as a conqueror, Pontanus greeted 
him with a panegyrical oration, proving himself more 
courtly than loyal to the princes he served. Through- 
out his writings he shows himself to have been an 
original and vigorous thinker, a complete master of 
Latin scholarship, unwilling to abide contented with 
bare imitation, and bent upon expressing the facts of 
modern life, the actualities of personal emotion, ina 
style that might compete with good models of antiquity. 
His amatory elegiacs have an exuberance of coloring 
and sensuous force of phrase that seem peculiarly 
appropriate to the Bay of Naples where they were 
inspired. He died in 1503. 





XI. 


MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA. 


Ja eel to the marked diversity exhibited by the 
different States of Italy, the forms assumed by 
art and literature are never exactly the same in any 
two cities. If the natives of the Two Sicilies were not 
themselves addicted to serve scholarship, the lighter 
kinds of writing flourished there abundantly, and Naples 
gave her own peculiar character to literature. This 
was not the case with Milan. Yet Milan, during the 
reigns of the last Visconti and the first Sforza, claims 
attention, owing to the accident of Filelfo’s residence 
at the ducal court. Filippo Maria Visconti was, as we 
have seen, one of the most repulsive tyrants who have 
ever disgraced a civilized country. Shut up within his 
palace walls among astrologers, minions, and monks, 
carefully protected from the public eye, and watched 
by double sets of mutually suspicious body-guards, it 
was impossible that he should extend thefree encourage- 
ment to learned men which we admire at Naples. The 
history of humanism at Milan has, therefore, less to do 
with the city or the ducal circle than with the private 
labors of students allured to Lombardy by the promise 
or expectancy of high pay. 
Piero Candido Decembrio began life as Filippo 
Maria’s secretary. To his vigorous pen 


i ‘ . Decembrie. 
the student of Italian history owes the mi- P 


188 MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA. 


nutest and most vivid sketch now extant of the habits 
and the vices of a tyrant. This remains the best title 
of Decembrio to recollection, though his works, origi- 
nal and translated, if we may trust his epitaph in S, 
Ambrozio, amounted to 127 books when he died in 
1447- 

Francesco Filelfo was born in 1398 at Tolentino in 
the March of Ancona. He studied gram- 
mar, rhetoric, and Latin literature at Padua, 
where he was appointed professor at the early age of 
eighteen. In 1417 he received an invitation to teach elo- 
quence and moral philosophy at Venice. Here he re- 
mained two years, deriving much advantage from the 
society of Guarino da Verona, and Vittorino da Feltre, 
and forming useful connections with the Venetian nobil- 
ity. After being admitted citizen of Venice by public de- 
cree he was appointed secretary to the Baily (Zaza, or 
Consul-General) of Constantinople. There he put him- 
self at once under the tuition of John Chrysoloras, the 
brother of Manuel, whose influence at the Imperial court 
brought Filelfo into favor with John Palzologus. The 
young Italian student, having speedily acquired famil- 
iarity with the Greek tongue, received the titles of 
Secretary and Counsellor, and executed some impor 
tant diplomatic missions for his Imperial master. 

After his marriage to Theodora, the daughter of his 
His tutor Chrysoloras, Filelfo received an offer 

great ‘ ‘ 
acquire- of the Chair of Eloquence at Venice, and 
ments. landed there with his wife and infant son in 
1427. The object of his journey to Constantinople had 
been fully attained. After an absence of seven and a half 
years, he returned to his native country with Greek learn- 
ing, increased reputation, and a large supply of Greek 


Filelfo. 


MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA, 189 


books. His proud boast, frequently repeated in after-life, 
that no man living but himself had mastered the whole 
literature of the ancients in both languages, that no 
one else could wield the prose of Cicero, the verse of 
Horace and of Virgil, and the Greek of Homer and of 
Xenophon with equal versatility, was not altogether an 
empty vaunt. Taken at their lowest valuation, the 
claims of Filelfo, well founded in fact, mark him out as 
the most universal scholar of his age. 

His reception at Venice by no means _ corresponded 
to the promises by which he had been g, jcogsive 
tempted, or to the value which he set on his engage- 
own services. The plague was in the city; ™e0% 
the nobles had taken flight to their country houses, and 
there was no one to attend his lectures. He therefore 
very readily accepted an offer sent him from Bologna, 
and early in the year 1428 we find him settled in that city 
as professor of eloquence and moral philosophy. He 
was not destined to remain there long, however, for the 
disturbed state of the town rendered teaching impos- 
sible; and when flattering proposals arrived from the 
Florentines, he set off in haste and transferred his 
family across the Apennines. 

They were halcyon days for Filelfo during his early 
residence in Florence, while he was still wis fends at 
enjoying the friendship of learned men, Florence. 
receiving new engagements from the university, and 
when he had not yet won the hatred of the Medicean 
faction. But he was soon involved in feud with the 
Florentine scholars. His arrogance, the meanness of 
his private life, and his imprudence in public, were so 
great, that even the men who invited him became his 
bitter foes. Niccol de’ Niccoli, always jealous of 


190 MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA. 


superiority and apt to take offence, was the first with 
whom he quarrelled; then followed Carlo Aretino and 
Ambrozio Traversari; until at last the whole of the 
Medicean party were inflamed against him. Filelfo, 
on his side, spared neither satires nor slanders; and 
when the political crisis, which for a time depressed 
the Medicean faction, was impending, he declared him 
self the public opponent of Cosimo. 

Already in the spring of 1433 he had been stabbed 
He retires to 10 the face, while walking to the university 
Siena, one morning, by a hired bravo; and when 
he accepted an invitation from Antonio Petrucci to 
lecture for two years at Siena he hired a Greek to re- 
taliate upon his foes in Florence. It seems incredible 
that even the foulness of Poggio’s invectives, and the 
fury of Filelfo’s satires, should account for the inter- 
vention of assassins. However, the most honorable 
invitations now began to shower upon him, The 
Council of Basle, the Venetian Senate, the Emperor of 
the East, Eugenius IV., the Universities of Perugia 
and Bologna, and the Duke of Milan, applied for his 
services. 

He closed first with the offers of the Senate of 
Hislifeat | Bologna, but after a sojourn there of only a 
Milan. few months he transferred himself to Milan, 
where he had a flattering reception, in 1440, from Fi- 
lippo Maria Visconti. We find him, during his residence 
at Milan, continually engaged in the exercise of rhetoric 
and in various literary work. He had the misfortune 
at this time to lose his wife Theodora, to whom he was 
much attached, but he soon married again. During the 
disasters that befell the State of Milan on the death of 
Vilippo Maria, Filelfo at first espoused the cause of the 





MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA. Ig! 


burghers, but was soon afterwards content to accept 
the patronage of Francesco Sforza. His avarice, and 
the literary scurrility by which he sought to profit, had 
become a distinguishing trait in his character. 

But, by fair means or by foul, Filelfo had managed 

to secure a splendid reputation throughout The honor 
Italy. His journey to Naples in 1453 re- pg hel a 
sembled a triumphal progress. Nicholas courts. 
V. entertained him with distinction; Alfonso dubbed 
him knight, and placed the poet’s laurel on his brow 
with his own hands. As he passed through their capitals, 
the princes received him like an equal. At Ferrara he 
enjoyed the hospitalities of Duke Borso, at Mantua the 
friendship of the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga; the ter- 
rible Gismondo Pandolfo Malatesta welcomed him in 
Rimini, and the General Jacopo Piccinino in his camp 
at Fossombrone. 

Until the death of Francesco Sforza, Milan continued 
to be the city of Filelfo’s choice. After wis in suc. 
that event he turned his thoughts to Rome, ¢ess at 
Pius II., Paul II., and Sixtus IV. in succes- Lea ree 
sion had testified their regard for him. At Milan. 
last, in 1474, he had the offer of a professorial chair 
from the last-named Pope, and the promise of the 
first vacant post in the Apostolic Chancery. Again 
the old man of seventy-seven years crossed the Apen- 
nines, and began his lectures in Rome. The vigorous old 
scholar at first felt that all his previous life had been a 
tedious prologue to this blissful play. The usual clouds, 
however, soon appeared: quarrels with the Pope’s 
treasurer and with the Pope himself, with the usual 
accompaniment of fierce invectives and scathing letters, 
leading to his return to Milan in 1476, to find his third 


192 MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA. 


wife dead of the plague, and buried on the eve of his 
arrival. 

Filelfo’s last journey was undertaken in 1481. II 
His career 2t ease and sore of heart, the veteran of 
ends at scholarship still longed for further triumphs, 
Florence. = AJ] his wishes for some time past had been 
set on ending his days at Florence, near the person of 
Lorenzo de’ Medici; and when an invitation to the 
Chair of Greek Literature arrived, it found him eager 
to set forth, He just managed to reach Florence, 
where he died of dysentery, a fortnight after his 
arrival, at the age of eighty-three. The Florentines 
buried him in the church of the Annunziata. 

Some notice should be given to Vittorino da Feltre, 

who has been mentioned as having been en- 

basa gaged in educating the sons of the Marquis 
of Mantua. His father’s name was Bruto de’ 
Rambaldoni ; but, having been born at Feltre in the year 
1378 he took from his birthplace the surname by which 
he is bestknown. His early studies were carried on at 
Padua, from which town he appears to have moved about 
the year 1417 to Venice ; and, having learnt Greek there, 
he returned to his old university as professor of rhet- 
oric. We find that, as soon as he was settled again in 
Padua, he opened a school for a fixed number of young 
men, selected without regard to rank or wealth. Be- 
coming dissatisfied with this, he moved a second time 
to Venice in 1423, where he continued his work as a 
private tutor. By this time he had acquired consider- 
able reputation as an educator, and the Marquis of 
Mantua, Gian Francesco Gonzaga, being in want of a 
master for his children, the choice fell on Vittorino. 
His mode of education had much of the modern char. 


MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA. 193 


acter, combining athletics with study. He lived to a 
hale and hearty old age; and when he died, in 1446, 
it was found that the illustrious scholar, after enjoying 
for so many years the liberality of his princely patron, 
had not accumulated enough money to pay for his own 
funeral, Whatever he possessed he spent in charity 
during his lifetime. Few lives of which there is any 
record in history are so perfectly praiseworthy as Vitto- 
rino da Feltre’s ; few men have more nobly realized 
the idea of living for the highest objects of their age ; 
few have succeeded in keeping themselves so wholly 
unspotted by the vices of the world around them. 

By the patronage extended to Vittorino da Feltre, 
the court of Mantua took rank among the The patro- 
high schools of humanism in Italy. Ferrara (362°C) 
won a similar distinction through the liber- Florence. 
ality of the house of Estes; but, though the arts and 
letters flourished with exceeding brilliance beneath 
the patrons of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, they were 
but accessories to a splendid and voluptuous court life. 

The golden age of culture at Ferrara began in 1402, 
when Niccolo III. reopened the university. guarino 
Twenty-seven years later Guarino da Ve- da Verona. 
rona made it one of the five chief seats of 
southern learning. The life of this eminent scholar 
resembles in many points that of Filelfo, though their 
characters were very different. Guarino was born of 
respectable parents at Verona in 1370. He studied 
Latin in the school of Giovanni da Ravenna, and, while 
still a lad of eighteen, travelled to Constantinople, at 
the cost of a noble Venetian, Paolo Zane, in order to 
learn Greek. After an absence of five years he returned 
to Venice, and began to lecture to crowded audiences, 


13 


194 MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA. 


Like all humanists, at that time, he seems to have pre 
ferred temporary to permanent engagements—passing 
from Venice to Verona, from Trent to Padua, from 
Bologna to Florence, and everywhere acquiring that 
substantial reputation as a teacher to which he owed 
the invitation of Niccolo d’Este in 1429. 

He was now a man of nearly sixty, the master of the 
His lifeat two languages, and well acquainted with the 
Ferrara. method of instruction. The Marquis of 
Ferrara engaged him as tutor to his illegitimate 
son Lionello, heir apparent to his throne. For seven 
years Guarino devoted himself wholly to the educa- 
tion of this youth, who passed for one of the best scholars 
of his age. Amid the pleasure of the chase, to which 
he was passionately devoted, and the distractions of the 
gayest court in Italy, the young prince found time to 
correspond on topics of scholarship with Poggio, Filel- 
fo, Decembrio, and Francesco Barbaro. His conver- 
sation turned habitually upon the fashionable themes 
of antique ethics, and his favorite companions were 
men of polite education. It is no wonder that the 
humanists, who saw in him a future Augustus, deplored 
his early death with unfeigned sorrow. The profile 
portrait of Lionello, in our National Gallery, may pos- 
sibly do him some injustice. 

Guarino, like his friend Vittorino da Feltre, was 
His well- celebrated for his method of teaching, and 
deserved for the exact order of his discipline. Stu- 
reputation. dents flocked from all the cities of Italy 
to his lecture room; for, as soon as his tutorial 
engagements with the prince permitted, he received 
a public appointment as professor of eloquence. In 
this post he labored for many years, maintaining his 


MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA. 195 


reputation as a student, and filling the universities of 
Italy with his pupils. He was one of the few human- 
ists whose moral character won equal respect with his 
learning. When he died at the age of ninety, the father 
of six boys and seven girls by his wife Taddea Cendrata 
of Verona, it was possible to say with truth that he had 
realized the ideal of a temperate scholar’s life. 

The name of Giovanni Aurispa must not be omitted 
in connection with Ferrara. Born in 1369 
at Noto in Sicily, he lived to a great age, 
dying in1459. He, too, travelled in early youth to Con- 
stantinople, and returned, laden with manuscripts and 
learning, to profess the humanities in Italy. His life 
forms, therefore, a close parallel with that of both 
Guarino and Filelfo. Aurispa, however, was gifted 
with a less unresting temper than Filelfo; nor did 
he achieve the same professional success as Guarino. 
In his school at Ferrara he enjoyed the calmer pleas- 
ures of a student’s life, “devoted,” as Filelfo phrased 
it, “to the plac’ d Muses.” 

To give an account of all the minor courts, where 
humanism flourished under the patronage 
of petty princes, would be tedious and un- 
profitable. It is enough to notice that the universities, 
in this age of indefatigable energy, kept forming 
scholars eager to make their way as secretaries and 
tutors, while the nobles competed for the honor and 
the profit to be derived from the service of illustrious 
wits and ready pens. The seeds of classic culture 
were thus sown in every little city that could boast its 
castle. But of the men thus trained, it would be an 
ungenerous omission to conclude without recording the 
name of Vespasiano da Bisticci, from whose Lives of 


Aurispa, | 


Vespasiano. 


196 MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA. 


[Vlustrious Men we have had so frequent occasion to 
quote. Peculiar interest attaches to him as the last 
of medizval scribes, and at the same time the first of 
modern booksellers. Besides being the agent of 
Cosimo de Medici, Nicholas V., and Frederick of 
Urbino, Vespasiano supplied the foreign markets, 
sending manuscripts by order to Hungary, Portugal, 
Germany, and England. The extent of his trade 
rendered him the largest employer of copyists in 
Europe, at the moment when this industry was about 
to be superseded, and when scholars were already in- 
quiring for news about the art that saved expense and 
shortened the labor of the student. Born in 1421 at 
Florence, he lived till 1498; so that, after having 
helped to form the three greatest collections of manu- 
scripts in Italy, he witnessed the triumph of printing, 
and might have even handled the M/useus issued from 
the Aldine press in 1493. Vespasiano was no mere 
tradesman. His knowledge of the books he sold was 
accurate ; continual study enabled him to overlook the 
copyists, and to vouch for the exactitude of their tran- 
scripts. At the same time, his occupation brought him 
into close intimacy with the chief scholars of the age, 
so that the new culture reached him by conversation 
and familiar correspondence. As a biographer he 
possessed rare merit. Personally acquainted with the 
men of whom he wrote, he drew their characters with 
praiseworthy succinctness and simplicity. The quali- 
ties he loves to celebrate are piety, chastity, generosity, 
devotion to the cause of liberal culture, and high- 
souled patriotism. It is pleasant thus to conclude with 
the character of a man so blameless in his life, so 
charitable in his judgments, and so trustworthy in his 
record of contemporary history .  \~ 





~o be 
© 


XII 
THE FINE ARTS. 


ag has been granted only to two nations, the Greeks 

and the Italians, and to the latter only at the time 
of the Renaissance, to invest every place and variety 
of intellectual energy with the form of art. Nothing 
notable was produced in Italy between the thirteenth 
and the seventeenth centuries that did not bear the 
stamp and character of fine art. If the methods of 
science may be truly said to regulate our modes of 
thinking at the present time, it is no less true that, 
during the Renaissance, art exercised a like controlling 
influence. Not only was each department of the fine 
arts practised with singular success ; not only was the 
national genius to a very large extent absorbed by 
painting, sculpture, and architecture; but the esthetic 
impulse was more subtly and widely diffused than this 
alone would imply. 

As we travel through Italy at the present day, when 
“time, war, pillage, and purchase” have {he ftalian 
done their worst to denude the country of character 
> P ‘ exemplified 
its treasures, we still marvel at the incom- jy their art 
parable and countless beauties stored in products. 
every burgh and hamlet. Pacing the picture galleries of 
Northern Europe, the country seats of English nobles, 
and the palaces of Spain, the same reflection is still 


198 THE FINE ARTS. 


forced upon us: how could Italy have done what she 
achieved within so short a space of time? What 
must the houses and the churches once have been 
from which these spoils were taken, but which still 
remain so rich in masterpieces? Psychologically to 
explain this universal capacity for the fine arts in 
the nation at this epoch is perhaps impossible, Yet 
the fact remains that he who would comprehend 
the Italians of the Renaissance must study their art, 
and cling fast to that Ariadne-thread throughout the 
labyrinthine windings of national character. He must 
learn to recognize that herein lay the sources of their 
intellectual strength as well as the secret of their in- 
tellectual weakness. 

Architecture is always the first of the fine arts to 


Archi- emerge from barbarism in the service of 
tecture religion and of civic life. In no way is the 
Gen ben characteristic diversity of the Italian com- 
locality. munities so noticeable as in their buildings. 


Each district, each town, has a well-defined peculiarity, 
reflecting the specific qualities of the inhabitants, and 
the conditions under which they grew in culture. Thus 
the name of the Lombards has been given to a style of 
Romanesque which prevailed through Northern and 
Central Italy during the period of Lombard ascendency. 
The Tuscans never forgot the domes of their remote 
ancestors; the Romans adhered closely to Latin tra- 
ditions ; the Southerners were affected by Byzantine 
and Saracenic models. In many instances the geology 
of the neighborhood determined the picturesque feat- 
ures of its architecture. The clay-fields of the valley 
of the Po produced the brick-work of Cremona, Pavia, 
Crema, Chiaravalle, and Vercelli. To their quarries of 


THE FINE ARTS. 199 


mandorlato the Veronese builders owed the peach- 
bloom tints of their columned aisles. Carrara provided 
the Pisans with mellow marble for their cathedral and 
baptistery; Monte Ferrato supplied Pistoja and Prato 
with green serpentine; while the JAzetra serena of the 
Apennines added austerity to the interior of Florentine 
buildings. In other instances we detect the influence 
of commerce or of conquest. The intercourse of Venice 
with Alexandria determined the unique architecture of 
S. Mark’s. The Arabs and the Normans left inefface- 
able traces of their sojourn on Palermo. Naples and 
Messina still bear marks upon their churches of French 
workmen. All along the coasts we here and there find 
evidences of Oriental style imported into medizval 
Italy, while the impress of the Spaniard is no less 
manifest in edifices of a later period. 

If Lombard architecture, properly so called, was 
partial in its influence and confined to a The Roman- 
comparatively narrow local sphere, the same esque style. 
is true of the Tuscan Romanesque. The church 
of San Miniato, overlooking Florence (about 1013) 
and the Cathedral of Pisa (begun 1063), not to 
mention other less eminent examples at Lucca and 
Pistoja, are sufficient evidences that in the darkest 
period of the Middle Ages the Italians were aiming at 
an architectural Renaissance. The influence of classi- 
cal models is apparent both in the construction and 
the detail of these basilicas; while the deeply grounded 
preference of the Italian genius for round arches, for 
colonnades of pillars and pilasters, and for large rec- 
tangular spaces with low roofs and shallow tribunes, 
finds full satisfaction in these original and noble build- 
ings. 


200 THE FINE ARTS. 


The advent of Gothic architecture in Italy was due 
The ill- partly to the direct influence of German 
successof | emperors, partly to the imperial sympathies 
Gothic. of the great nobles, partly to the Franciscan 
friars who aimed at building large churches cheaply, 
and partly to the admiration excited by the grandeur of 
the Pointed style as it prevailed in Northern Europe. 
But it is not to be understood that this style was of 
purely foreign origin. Italy, in common with the rest 
of Europe, passed by a natural process of evolution 
from the Romanesque to the Pointed manner, and 
treated the latter with an originality that proves a cer- 
tain natural assimilation. Yet the first Gothic church 
—that of S. Francis at Assisi—was designed by a Ger- 
man; the most splendid, that of Our Lady at Milan, is 
emphatically German in style, though its first architect 
was a Milanese. While, during the brief period of 
Gothic ascendency, we have the cathedrals of Siena, 
Orvieto, Lucca, Bologna, Florence, and Milan, together 
with the town-halls of Perugia, Siena, and Florence, 
the style refused to take hold upon the national taste, 
and died away before the growing passion for antiquity 
that restored the Italians to a sense of their own in- 
tellectual greatness. 

About the same time that the cathedrals were being 
built, the nobles filled the towns with for- 


Domestic 
archi- tresses. ‘These, at first, were gaunt and 
tecture. unsightly, with tall, bare watch-towers, as 


may be still seen at San Gemignano, or at Pavia and 
Bologna. In course of time, when the aristocracy came 
to be fused with the burghers, and public order was 
maintained by law in the great cities, these forts made 
way for spacious palaces. The temper of the citizens 
in each place and the local character of artistic taste 


THE FINE ARTS. 201 


determined the specific features of domestic as of 
ecclesiastical architecture. Though it is hard to define 
what are the social differences expressed by the large 
quadrangles of Francesco Sforza’s hospital at Milan, 
and the heavy cube of the Riccardi palace at Florence, 
we feel that the genius Joct has in each case controlled 
the architect. 

To the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, again, 
we owe the town-halls and public palaces Municipal 
that form so prominent a feature in the city buildings. 
architecture of Italy. Few of these public palaces 
have the good fortune to be distinguished, like that 
of the Doges at Venice, by world-historical memories 


and by works of art as yet unrivalled. The spirit 


of the Venetian republic still lives in that unique 
building. Two others, of the time of the Communes, 
rearing their towers above the town for tocsin and 
for ward, may be mentioned for their intrinsic 
beauty. These are the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, 
and the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. Few build- 
ings in Europe are more picturesquely fascinating than 
the palace of Siena, with its outlook over hill and 
dale to cloud-clapped Monte Amiata. Yet, in spite of 
its unparalleled position on the curved and sloping 
piazza, this palace lacks the vivid interest attaching to 
the home Arnolfo raised at Florence for the rulers 
of his native city. During their term of office the 
priors never quitted the palace of the Signory. All 
deliberations on state affairs took place within its walls, 
and the bell was the pulse that told how the heart of 
Florence throbbed. 

The architect of this huge mass of ma- arnolfo del 
sonry was Arnolfo del Cambio, one of the Cambio. 


202 THE FINE ARTS. 


greatest builders of the Middle Ages—a man whe 
may be called the Michael Angelo of the thirteenth 
century. No Italian architect has enjoyed the proud 
privilege of stamping his own individuality more 
strongly on his native city than Arnolfo. When 
we take our stand upon the hill of San Miniato, the 
Florence at our feet is seen to owe her physiognomy 
in a great measure to this man. The tall tower of the 
Palazzo Vecchio, the bulk of the Duomo, and the 
long, low, oblong mass of Santa Croce, are all his. His, 
too, are the walls that define the City of Flowers from 
the gardens round about her. ven the master-works 
of his successors subordinate their beauty to his first 
conception. Giotto’s campanile, Brunelleschi’s cupola, 
and Orcagna’s church of Orsammichele, in spite of 
their undoubted and authentic originality, are placed — 
where he had planned. 

The classical revival of the fifteenth century made 
itself immediately felt in architecture, and 


A style RA! : 

adapted Brunelleschi’s visit to Rome in 1403 may 
“Sieh be fixed as the date of the Renaissance in 
remains, this art. The problem was how to restore 


the manner of ancient Rome as far as possible, adapt- 
ing it to the modern requirements of ecclesiastical, 
civic, and domestic buildings. Of Greek art they 
knew comparatively nothing; nor, indeed, would 
Greek architecture have offered for their purpose the 
same plastic elements as Roman—itself a derived 
style, admitting of easier adjustment to modern uses 
than the inflexibly pure art of Greece. At the same 
time they possess but imperfect fragments of Roman 
work. The ruins of baths, theatres, temple-fronts, 
and triumphal arches were of little immediate assistance 





sag +. 


THE FINE ARTS. 203 


in the labor of designing churches and palaces. All 
that the architects could do, after familiarizing them- 
selves with the remains of ancient Rome, and assimilat- 
ing the spirit of Roman art, was to clothe their own 
inventions with classic details. The form and struct- 
ure of their edifices were modern; the parts were 
copied from antique models. A want of organic unity 
and structural sincerity is always the result of those 
necessities under which a secondary and adapted 
style must labor; and thus the pseudo-Roman build- 
ings, even of the best Renaissance period, display 
faults similar to those of the Italian Gothic. 
Brunelleschi, in designing the basilica of S. Lorenzo, 
in 1425, after an original but truly classic The puila- 
type, remarkable for its sobriety and correct- EELS 
ness, followed what he had learnt from leschi. 
the ruins of Rome under the guidance of his own 
artistic instinct. And yet the general effect resembles 
nothing we possess of antique work. It is a master- 
piece of intelligent Renaissance adaptation. The 
same is true of S. Spirito, built in 1470, after his 
death, according to his plans. The extraordinary 
capacity of this great architect will, however, win more 
homage from ordinary observers when they con- 
template the Pitti Palace and the cupola of the Duomo. 
Both of these are masterpieces of personal originality. 
Almost contemporary with Brunelleschi was Leo 
Battista Alberti, of whose extraordinary yeo Battista 
ability in every department of the fine arts Alberti. 
we have already spoken. Inhis church of S. Francesco 
at Rimini, and that of S. Andrea at Mantua, he sou,sht 
to reproduce more closely the actual elements of 
Roman architecture. Like Brunelleschi, he displayed 


204 THE FINE ARTS. 


his talent as an architect in the building of the Palazzp 
Rucellai, of which frequent mention has been made 
in connection with the society at Florence in the time 
of the Medici. This building, one of the most beauti- 
ful in Italy, became a model to subsequent architects. 
It was copied by Francesco di Giorgio and Bernardo 
Fiorentino for the palaces they constructed at Pienza, 
a little town near Montepulciano. The first medium 
between medizval massiveness and classic simplicity 
was attained in countless buildings, beautiful and 
various beyond description. Bologna is full of them ; 
and Urbino, in the ducal palace, contains one speci- 
men unexampled in extent and unique in interest. 
After Brunelleschi and Alberti came Michellozzo, 
who was commissioned to raise the large, 
but comparatively humble, Riccardi Palace 
in the corner of the Via Larga, which continued to be 
the residence of the Medici through all their chequered 
history until they took possession of the Palazzo Pitti. 
But one of the most beautiful of all the Florentine dwell- 
Benedetto ing-houses designed at this period is that 
da Majano. which Benedetto da Majano built for 
Filippo Strozzi. Combining the burgher-like austerity 
of antecedent ages with a grandeur and a breadth of 
style peculiar to the Renaissance, the Palazzo Strozzi 
may be chosen as the perfect type of Florentine do-. 
mestic architecture. 

To Bramante must be assigned the foremost place 
among the architects of the golden age. 
Though little of his work survives entire 
and unspoiled, it is clear that he exercised the pro- 
foundest influence over both successors and contempo- 
raries. What they chiefly owed to him was the proper 


Michellozzo. 


Bramante. 





THE FINE ARTS. 205 


subordination of beauty in details to the grandeur of 
simplicity and to unity of effect. He came at a 
moment when constructive problems had been solved, 
when mechanical means were perfected, and when the 
sister arts had reached their highest point. It is hard 
to say how much of the work ascribed to him in 
Northern Italy is genuine ; but most of it, at any rate, 
belongs to the manner of his youth. The church of S. 
Maria della Consolazione at Todi, the palace of the 
Cancellaria at Rome, and the unfinished cathedral of 
Pavia enabled us to comprehend the general character 
of this great architect’s refined and noble manner. S. 
Peter’s, it may be said in passing, retains, in spite of 
all subsequent modifications, many essentially Bra- 
mantesque features—especially in the distribution of 
the piers and rounded niches. 

At Rome the influence of Bramante was propagated 
through Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Baldassare 
Peruzzi. Raphael’s claim to consideration porno) as 
as an architect rests upon the Palazzi architect. 
Vidoni and Pandolfini, the Capella Chigi in S. 
Maria del Popolo, and the Villa Madama. The 
last-named building, executed by Giulio  giniio 
Romano after Raphael’s designs, is carried Romano. 
out in a style so forcible as to make us fancy that the 
pupil had a larger share in its creation than his master. 
These works, however, sink into insignificance before 
the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, the masterpiece of 
Giulio’s genius. This most noble of Italian pleasure- 
houses remains to show what the imagination of a poet- 
artist could recover from the splendor of old Rome, 
and adapt to the use of his own age. A pendent to 
the Palazzo del Te is the Villa Farnesina, raised on 


206 THE FINE ARTS. 


Baldassare the banks of the Tiber by Baldassare Peruzzi 
Peruzzi. for his fellow-townsman Agostino Chigi of 
Siena. The frescoes of Galatea and Psyche, executed 
by Raphael and his pupils, have made this villa famous 
in the annals of Italian painting. 

Among the great edifices of a later period we may 

reckon Jacopo Sansovino’s buildings at 
Jacopo ; , 
Sansoyinon,  Wenice, though they approximate rather to 
thearehi- the style of the earlier Renaissance in all 
ss that concerns exuberance of decorative de. 
tail. The court of the ducal palace, the Scuola di S. 
Rocco, the Palazzo Corner, and the Palazzo Vendra- 
mini-Calergi illustrate the strong yet fanciful dravura 
style that pleased the aristocracy of Venice. Nowhere 
else does the architecture of the Middle Ages melt by 
more imperceptible degrees into that of the revival, 
retaining through all changes the impress of a people 
splendor-loving in the highest sense. The Library of 
S. Mark, built by Sansovino in 1536, remains, however, 
the crowning triumph of Venetian art. Itis impossible 
to contemplate its double row of open arches without 
echoing the judgment of Palladio that nothing more 
sumptuous or beautiful had been invented since the 
age of ancient Rome. 

Passing over a crowd of other architects who gained 
Michael distinction in the first half of the sixteenth 
Angeloas | century—Antonio di San Gallo. famous for 
architect. fortifications ; Baccio d’ Agnolo, who raised 
the campanile of S. Spirito at Florence; Giovanni 
Maria Flaconetto, to whose genius Padua owed sa 
many princely edifices; Michaele Sanmicheli, the mili 
tary architect of Verona, and the builder of five mighty 
palaces for the nobles of his native city—our attention 





THE FINE ARTS. 207 


must be arrested at the name of Michael Angelo. In 
architecture as in sculpture, he not only bequeathed to 
posterity masterpieces in their kind unrivalled, but he 
also prepared for his successors a false way of work- 
ing, and justified by his example the extravagances of 
the decadence. Without noticing the fagade designed 
for S. Lorenzo at Florence, the transformation of the 
baths of Diocletian into a church, the remodelling of 
the Capitoline buildings, and the continuation of the 
Palazzo Farnese—works that either exist only in draw- 
ings or have been confused by later alterations—it is 
enough here to mention the Sagrestia Nuova of S. 
Lorenzo and the dome of S. Peter’s. The sacristy may 
be looked on as the masterpiece of a sculptor who re- 
quired fit setting for his statues, or of an architect who 
designed statues to enhance the structure he had 
planned. Both arts are used with equal ease, nor has 
the genius of Michael Angelo dealt more masterfully 
with the human frame than with the forms of Roman 
architecture in this chapel. What S. Peter’s would 
have been if he had lived to finish it can only be im- 
agined from his plans and elevations still preserved. 
It must always remain a matter of profound regret that 
his design was so far altered as to sacrifice the effect 
of the dome from the piazza. 

With the decadence of the Renaissance the archi- 
tects inclined more to base their practice 
upon minute study of antique writers. They, 
more than any of their predecessors, realized the long- 
sought restitution of the classic style according to precise 
scholastic canons. The greatest builder of the time 
we speak of was Andrea Palladio of Vicenza, who com- 
bined a more complete analytical knowledge of an- 


Palladio. 


208 THE FINE ARTS. 


tiquity with a firmer adherence to rule and precedent 
than even the most imitative of his forerunners. It is 
useless to seek for decorative fancy, wealth of detail, 
or sallies of inventive genius in the Palladian style. 
All is cold and calculated in the many palaces and 
churches which adorn both Venice and Vicenza. They 
make us feel that inspiration has been superseded by 
the reason. But one great public building of Palladio’s 
—the Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza—may be cited 
as perhaps the culminating point of pure Renaissance 
architecture. 

In the procession of the fine arts Sculpture always 
Niccola follows close upon the steps of Architect- 
Pisano. - ure, and at first appears in some sense as 
her handmaid. Medizval Italy found her Pheidias in 
a great man of Pisan origin, born during the first dec- 
ade of the thirteenth century. It was Niccola Pisano, 
architect and sculptor, who first with the breath of 
genius breathed life into the dead forms of plastic art. 
From him we date the dawn of the zsthetical Renais- 
sance with the same certainty as from Petrarch that of 
humanism ; for he determined the direction not only of 
sculpture but also of painting in Italy. In truth, 
Niccola Pisano put the artist on the right track of com- 
bining the study of antiquity with the study of nature; 
and to him belongs the credit not merely of his own 
achievement, considerable as that may be, but also. of 
the work of his immediate scholars and of all who 
learnt from him to portray life. From Niccola Pisano 
onward to Michael Angelo and Cellini we. trace our 
genealogy of sculptors who, though they carried art be- 
yond the sphere of his invention, looked back to him 
as their progenitor. Besides minor works, the hex: 





ah aaa 


THE FINE ARTS. 209 


agonal pulpit in the baptistery of Pisa, the octagonal 
pulpit in the cathedral of Siena, the fountain in the 
market-place of Perugia, and the shrine of S. Dominic 
at Bologna—all of them designed and partly finished 
between 1260 and 1274 by Niccola and his scholars— 
display his mastery over the art of sculpture in the 
maturity of his genius. 

Niccola Pisano founded a school. His son Giovanni, 
and the numerous pupils employed on the giovanni 
works we have mentioned, carried on the Pisano. 
tradition of their master, and spread his style abroad 
through Italy. Giovanni, to whom we owe the 
Spina Chapel and the Campo Santo at Pisa, the 
facade of the Duomo at Siena, and the altar shrine of 
S. Donato at Arezzo—four of the purest works of 
Gothic art in Italy—showed a decided leaning to the 
vehement and mystic style of the Transalpine sculptors. 
We trace a dramatic intensity in Giovanni’s work, not 
derived from his father, not caught from study of the 
antique, and curiously blended with the general charac- 
teristics of the Pisan school. The Gothic element so cau- 
tiously adopted by Niccola is used with sympathy and 
freedom by his son, whose masterpiece, the pulpit of S. 
Andrea at Pistoja, might be selected as the supreme 
triumph of Italian Gothic sculpture. The superiority 
of that complex and consummate work of plastic art 
over the pulpit of the Pisan baptistery, in all the most 
important qualities of style and composition, can 
scarcely be called in question. 

As the church of S. Francis at Assisi formed an 
epoch in the history of painting, by con- w, g, 
centrating the genius of Giotto ona series thedral of 
of masterpieces, so the Duomo of Orvieto, OTviet 

14 


210 THE FINE ARTS. 


by giving free scope to the school of Pisa, marked a 
point in the history of sculpture. It would be difficult 
to find elsewhere even separate works of greater force 
and beauty belonging to this, the first or architectural 
period of Italian sculpture ; and nowhere has the whole 
body of Christian belief been set forth with method 
more earnest and with vigor more sustained. Whether 
Giovanni Pisano had any share in the sculpture on 
the facade of this cathedral is not known for certain. 
The Orvietan archives are singularly silent with regard 
to a monument of so large extent and vast importance, 
which must have taxed to the uttermost the resources 
of the ablest stone-carvers in Italy. But his manner, 
as continued and developed by his school, is unmistak- 
able here; and in the absence of direct information we 
are left to conjecture the conditions under which this, 
the closing if not the crowning, achievement of thir- 
teenth-century sculpture was produced. 

Among the most distinguished scholars of Niccola 
Autres Pisano’s tradition must now be mentioned 
Pisano. Andrea da Pontadera, called Andrea Pisano, 
who carried the manner of his master to Florence, and 
helped to fulfil the destiny of Italian sculpture by sub- 
mitting it to the rising art of painting. Under the direc- 
tion of Giotto he carved statues for the Campanile and 
the facade of the Duomo; and in the first gate of the 
baptistery he bequeathed a model of bas-relief in bronze, 
which largely influenced the style of masters in the 
fifteenth century. To overpraise the simplicity and 
beauty of design, the purity of feeling, and the tech- 
nical excellence of Andrea’s bronze-work would be 
difficult. 

The most eminent pupil of Andrea Pisano was 4 


a 


THE FINE ARTS. 211 


Florentine—the great Andrea Arcagnuolo di Cione, com: 
monly known as Orcagna. This man, like 
the more illustrious Giotto, was one among 
the earliest of those comprehensive, many-sided natures 
produced by Florence for her everlasting glory. He 
studied under his father, Cione, like other Tuscan 
artists, -the technical details of the goldsmith’s craft, 
which then supplied the strictest method of design. 
With his brother, Bernardo, he practiced painting. 
Like Giotto, he was no mean poet; and, like all the 
higher craftsmen of his age, he was an architect. 
Though the church of Orsammichele owes its present 
form to Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna, as capo maestro after 
Gaddi’s death, completed the structure; and though 
the Loggia de’ Lanzi, long ascribed to him by writers 
upon architecture, is now known to be the work of 
Benci di Cione, yet Orcagna’s Loggio del Bigallo, more 
modest but not less beautiful, prepared the way for its 
construction. His genius as a painter is proved by the 
frescoes in the Strozzi chapel of S, Maria Novella. As 
a sculptor he is best known through the tabernacle in 
Orsammichele, built to enshrine the picture of the 
Madonna by Ugolino daSiena. In this monument the 
subordination of sculpture to architectural effect is 
noticeable; and the Gicttesque influence appears even 
more strongly here than in the gate of Andrea Pisano, 
When the Signory decided to complete the bronze 
gates of the baptistery in the first year of Tne compe- 
the fifteenth century, they issued a manifesto one 
inviting the sculptors of Italy to prepare gates of the 
designs for competition. Their call was baptistery. 
answered by Giacomo della Quercia of Siena, by 
Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo di Cino Ghi- 


Orcagna, 


212 THE FINE ARTS. 


berti of Florence, and by two other Tuscan artists 
of less note. The young Donatello, aged sixteen, is 
said to have been consulted as to the rival merits of 
the designs submitted to the judges. Thus the four 
great masters of Tuscan art in its prime met before the 
Florentine baptistery. Giacomo della Quercia was 
excluded from the competition at an early stage; but 
the umpires wavered long between Ghiberti and Bru- 
nelleschi, until the latter, with noble generosity, feeling 
the superiority of his rival, and conscious perhaps that 
his own laurels were to be gathered in the field of 
architecture, withdrew his claim. In 1403 Ghiberti 
received the commission for the first of the two remain- 
ing gates. He afterwards obtained the second; and, 
as they were not finished until 1452, the better part of 
his lifetime was spent upon them. 

How Della Quercia treated the subject given, the 
Della Sacrifice of Isaac, we do not know. His bas- 
Quercia. reliefs upon the facade of S. Petronio at 
Bologna, and round the font of S. John’s Chapel in the 
cathedral of Siena, enable us, however, to compare his 
style with that of Ghiberti. There is no doubt but 
that he was a formidable rival. Had the gates been 
intrusted to his execution, we might have possessed a 
masterpiece of more heroic style. While smoothness 
and an almost voluptuous suavity of outline distinguish 
Ghiberti’s figures, Della Quercia, by the concentration 
of robust and rugged power, anticipates the style of 
Michael Angelo. ‘Two other memorable works of Della 
Quercia may be mentioned in passing: the Fonte Gaja 
on the public square of Siena, now unhappily restored, 
and the portrait of Ilaria del Carretto on her tomb in 
the cathedral of Lucca. 





cea 


THE FINE ARTS. 213 


One great advantage of the early days of the Renais 
sance over the latter was this, that pseudo- 
paganism and pedantry had not as yet dis- 
torted the judgment or misdirected the aims of artists. 
Of the impunity with which a sculptor in that period 
could submit his genius to the service and the study of 
ancient art without sacrificing individuality, Donatello 
furnishes a still more illustrious example than Ghiberti. 
Early in his youth he journeyed with Brunelleschi to 
Rome, in order to acquaint himself with the monu- 
ments then extant. How thoroughly he comprehended 
the classic spirit is proved by the bronze patera 
wrought for his patron Ruberto Martelli, and by the 
frieze of the triumphant Bacchus. Yet the great 
achievements of his genius were Christian in their 
sentiment and realistic in their style. The bronze 
Magdalen of the Florentine baptistery, and the bronze 
Baptist of the Duomo at Siena, as also the wooden 
Baptist in the Frari at Venice, are executed with an 
unrelenting materialism, not alien indeed to the sin- 
cerity of classic art, but divergent from antique tradi- 
tion, inasmuch as the ideas of repentant and prophetic 
asceticism had no place in Greek mythology. A more 
felicitous embodiment of modern feeling was achieved 
by him in his S. George, a marble statue placed upon 
the north wall of Orsammichele, and in his bronze 
David, cast for Cosimo de’ Medici, and now in the 
Bargello. His numerous other works in bronze and 
marble, to be found in churches and museums, show 
how widely his influence was diffused through Italy, 
and of what inestimable value it was in correcting the 
false direction towards pictorial sculpture which Ghr 
berti might have given. 


Donatello, 


214 THE FINE ARTS. 


Andrea Verocchio, goldsmith, painter, and worker in 
bronze, was the most distinguished of 
Donatello’s pupils. To all the arts he prac- 
ticed he applied limited powers, a meagre manner, and a 
prosaic mind. But the fact that he numbered Lionardo 
da Vinci, Lorenzo di Credi, and Pietro Perugino among 
his scholars proves the esteem he enjoyed among his 
contemporaries; and when we have observed that the 
type of face selected by Lionardo and transmitted to 
his followers appears also in the pictures of Lorenzo 
di Credi, and is found in the David of Verocchio, we 
have a right to affirm that the master of these men 
was an artist of creative genius as well as a careful 
workman. His most famous work is the equestrian 
statue of the great Condottiere, Bartolommeo Colleoni, 
which stands in the piazza in front of the Scuola di S. 
Marco, better known as the Campo di S. Zanipolo, at 
Venice. 

Luca della Robbia, whose life embraced the first 
Luca della Cighty years of the fifteenth century, offers 
Robbia. in many important respects a contrast to 
his contemporaries Ghiberti and Donatello, and still 
more to their immediate followers. He made his 
art as true to life as it is possible to be, without the 
rugged realism of Donatello or the somewhat effemi- 
nate graces of Ghiberti. He was apprenticed in his 
youth toa goldsmith; but of what he wrought before 
the age of forty-five we know but little. At that time 


Verocchio, 


his faculty had attained full maturity, and he pro- — 


duced the groups of dancing children and choristers 
intended for the organ gallery of the Duomo. Move- 
ment has never been suggested in stone with less exag- 
geration, nor have marble lips been made to utter 


THE FINE ARTS. 21% 


sweeter and more varied music. His true perception of 
the limits to be observed in sculpture appears most 
eminently in the glazed ¢erra cotta work by which he is 
best known. His nephew, Andrea della Robbia, with his 
four sons, continued to manufacture the glazed earthen- 
ware of Luca’s invention, but their work lacked the 
fine taste of their master. They were followed by 
Agostino di Gucci or di Duccio, a sculptor who handled 
terra cotta somewhat in the manner of Donatello’s flat- 
relief, and aiming at more passion than Luca’s taste 
permitted. 

Four sculptors, the younger contemporaries of Luca 
della Robbia, and marked by certain com- 
mon qualities, demand a passing mention. 
All the work of Antonio Rossellino, Matteo Civitale, 
Mino da Fiesole, and Benedetto da Majano, is dis- 
tinguished by sweetness, grace, tranquillity and self- 
restraint. But there are differences in their style 
which may be noticed. Rossellino has a leaning to- 
wards the manner of Ghiberti, whose landscape back- 
grounds he has adopted in the circular medallions of 
his monumental sculpture. Rare dignity, however, is 
to be found in the much-admired monument of the 
young Cardinal di Portogallo, in the church of San 
Miniato. The sublimity of the slumber that is death 
has never been more nobly and feelingly portrayed. 
Matteo Civitale, of Lucca, was at least 
Rossellino’s equal in the sculpturesque de- 
lineation of spiritual qualities; but the motives he chose 
for treatment were more varied. All his work is pene- 
trated with deep, prayerful, intense feeling, as though 
the artist’s soul, poured forth in ecstasy and adoration, 
had been given to the marble. For the people of 


Rossellino. 


Civitale. 


216 THE FINE ARTS. 


Lucca he designed the Chapel of the Santo Volto—a 
gem of the purest Renaissance architecture—and a 
pulpit in the same style. The altar of S. Regulus 
might also be named as an epitome of all that is most 
characteristic of the earlier Renaissance. Mino di 
Giovanni, called Da Fiesole, was characterized by 
grace that tended to degenerate into formality. The 
Mino da tombs in the abbey of Florence have an 
Fiesole. almost infantile sweetness of style, which 
might be extremely piquant were it not that he pushed 
this quality in other works to the verge of mannerism. 
His bust of Bishop Salutati in the cathedral of Fiesole 
is, however, a powerful portrait, no less distinguished 
for vigorous individuality than consummate workman- 
ship. Benedetto da Majano, whom we have already 
mentioned as the designer of the Strozzi Palace, and 
his friend Desiderio da Settignano, one of Donatello’s 
few scholars, were endowed with the same gift of ex- 
quisite taste as Mino da Fiesole. 

The list of fifteenth-century sculptors is almost 
Andreada ended; and already, on the threshold of the 
Sansovino, sixteenth, stands the mighty form of Michael 
buat ta Angelo. Andrea Contucci da Sansovino 
and his pupil, Jacopo Tatti, called also Sansovino, 
must, however, be mentioned as continuing the Flor- 
entine tradition without subservience to the style 
of Buonarroti. Andrea da Sansovino was a sculptor 
in whom, for the first time, the faults of the mid- 
Renaissance period was glaringly apparent. He per- 
sistently sacrificed simplicity of composition to deco- 
rative ostentation, and tranquillity of feeling to theatri- 
cal effect. The truth of this will be acknowledged by 
all who have studied the tombs of the cardinals in S, 





THE FINE ARTS. 219 


Maria del Popolo, and the bas-reliefs upon the Santa 
Casa at Loreto. Jacopo Tatti was a genius —Jagono 
of more distinction. Together with San Tatti. 
Gallo. and Bramante he studied the science of archi- 
tecture in Rome, where he also worked at the restora- 
tion of newly-discovered antiques, and cast in bronze a 
copy of the Laocoon. He was called, in 1523, by the 
Doge, Andrea Gritti, to Venice, and there he worked 
until his death in 1570, building the Zecca, the Li- 
brary, the Scala d’Oro in the ducal palace, and the Log- 
gietta beneath the bell-tower of S. Mark. He was a 
first-rate craftsman, and marks the final intrusion of 
paganism into modern art. The classical revival had 
worked but partially and indirectly upon Ghiberti and 
Donatello—not because they did not feel it intensely, 
but because they clung to nature far more closely than 
to antique precedent. The most beautiful and spirited 
pagan statue of the Renaissance period is Sansovino’s 
Bacchus in the Bargello Museum. Both the Bacchus 
and the Satyriscus at his side are triumphs of realism, 
irradiated and idealized by the sculptor’s sense of 
natural gladness. Considered as a restitution of the 
antique manner, this statue is decidedly superior to the 
Bacchus of Michael Angelo. 

It is a long descent to name Baccio Bandinelli and 
Bartolommeo Ammanati, who filled the 9. aieni 
squares of the Italian cities with statues of and Amma- 
Hercules and Satyrs, Neptune and River- 2th 
gods. We know not whether to select the vulgarity, 
the feebleness, or the pretentiousness of these pseudo- 
classical colossi for condemnation. They have nothing 
Greek about them but their names, their naked- 
ness, and their association with myths, the signifi- 


218 THE FINE ARTS. 


eance whereof was never really felt by the sculptors, 
But, at the same time, there were works produced in 
illustration of classical mythology which have true 
Benvenuto Value as works of art. The Ferseus of 
eat Benvenuto Cellini and some of Gian Bo- 
Bologna. logna’s statues belong to a class of esthetic 
productions which show how much that is both origi- 
nal and excellent may be raised in the hot-bed of 
culture. 

Beginning as the handmaid of the Church, and stimu- 
Painting lated by the enthusiasm of the two great 
asanaidto popular monastic orders, painting was at first 
religion. devoted to embodying the thoughts of mediz- 
val Christianity. In proportion as the painters fortified 
themselves by study of the natural world, their art be- 
came more secular. About the year 1440 this process 
of secularization was hastened by the influence of the 
classical revival, renewing an interest in the past life of 
humanity, and stirring a zeal for science. 

We may still recall the story of Cimabue’s picture, 
visited by Charles of Anjou and borne in 
triumph through the streets to S. Maria 
Novella; for this was the birthday festival of nothing less 
than what the world now values as Italian painting. In 
this public act of joy the people of Florence recognized 
and paid enthusiastic honor to the art arisen among 
them from the dead. Ina dark transept, raised by steps 
above the level of the church, still hangs this famous 
Madonna of the Rucellai. It is in the Byzantine or 
Romanesque manner, from which Cimabue did not 
free himself; but we see here a distinctly fresh en: 
deavor to express emotion and to depict life, 


Cimabue. 





THE FINE ARTS. 219 


It remained for Giotto Bondone, born at Vespignano 
in 1276, just at the date of Niccola Pisano’s 
death, to carry painting in his lifetime even 
further than the Pisan sculptor had advanced the sister 
art. As we travel from Padua in the north, where his 
Arena chapel sets forth the legend of Mary and the life 
of Christ in a series of incomparable frescoes, southward 
to Naples, where he adorned the convent of S. Chiara, 
_we meet with Giotto in almost every city. Nothing, 
indeed, in the history of art is more remarkable than 
the fertility of this originative genius, no less industri- 
ous in labor than fruitful of results for men who fol- 
lowed him. Like Niccola Pisano, Giotto not only 
founded a school in his native city, but spread his 
manner far and wide over Italy, so that the first period 
of the history of painting is the Giottesque. The Gaddi 
of Florence, Giottino, Puccio Capanna, the Lorenzetti 
of Siena, Spinello of Arezzo, Andrea Orcagna, Dome- 
nico Veneziano, and the lesser artists of the Pisan 
Campo Santo, were either formed or influenced by 
him. | 

It is necessary to observe that at Siena painting had 
an independent origin, and Guido da Siena gyjao da Siena 
may claim to rank even earlier than Cima- and Duccio. 
bue. But the first great painter there was Duccio 
di Buoninsegna. The completion of his master- 
piece—a picture of the Majesty of the Virgin, exe- 
cuted for the high altar of the Duomo—marked an 
epoch in the history of Siena. As in the case of Cim- 
abue’s Madonna, bells rang and trumpets blew as this 
image of the sovereign mistress of the city was carried 
along the streets to be enthroned in her high temple. 

Far more than their neighbors at Florence, the 


Giotto. 


229 THE FINE ARTS. 


Sienese remained fettered by the technical methods 
Aniheagion. AUG the pietistic formulz of the earliest 
and Pietro religious painting. When they attempted 
Lorenzettii subjects on a large scale, the faults of 
the miniaturist clung about them. Ambrozio and 
Pietro Lorenzetti, however, form notable exceptions to 
this general statement. But it must be applied to 
Ginfone Simone Martini, who during his lifetime 
Martini. enjoyed a celebrity second only to that of 
Giotto. His first undisputed works are to be seen at 
Siena and Assisi, where we learn what he could do 
as a /frescante in competition with the ablest Floren- 
tines. 

We must return again to Florence; and foremost 
among the pioneers of Renaissance painting, 
towering above them all by head and shoul- 
ders, like Saul among the tribes of Israel, stands Masac- 
cio. The Brancacci chapel of the Carmine, painted in 
fresco almost entirely by his hand, was the school where 
all succeeding artists studied, and whence Raphael 
deigned to borrow the composition and the figures of a 
portion of his cartoons. The Legend of S. Catherine 
painted by Masaccio in S. Clemente at Rome, though an 
earlier work, is scarcely less remarkable as evidence 
that a new age had begun for art. Born in 1402, he 
left Florence in 1429 for Rome, and was not again 
heard of by his family. Thus perished, at the early 
age of twenty-seven, a painter whose work reveals not 
only the originality of creative genius, but a maturity 
that moves our wonder. Gifted with exceptional — 
powers, he overleaped the difficulties of his art, and 
arrived intuitively at results whereof as yet no scientifie 
certainty had been secured. 


Masaccio, 


THE FINE ARTS. 221 


Piero della Francesca, a native of Borgo San Sepol- 
cro, and a pupil of Domenico Veneziano, piero della 
must be placed among the painters of this Francesca. 
period who advanced their art by scientific study. 
Those who have once seen his fresco of the fes- 
urrection in the hall of the Compagna della Miseri- 
cordia at Borgo San Sepolcro will never forget the 
deep impression of solitude and aloofness from all 
earthly things produced by it. In addition to the 
many great paintings that command our admiration, 
he may claim the honor of being the teacher of Melozzo 
da Forli and of Luca Signorelli. | 

Signorelli bears a name illustrious in the first rank 
of Italian painters. He anticipated the yuo, 
greatest master of the sixteenth century, not Signorelli. 
only in his profound study of human anatomy, but also 
in his resolution to express high thought and tragic 
passion by pure form, discarding all the minor charms of 
painting. Life-long study of perspective, in its applica- 
tion to the drawing of the figure, made the difficulties of 
foreshortening, and the delineation of brusque attitude, 
‘mere child’s play to this audacious genius. The most 
rapid movement, the most perilous contortion of bodies 
falling through the air or flying, he depicted with hard, 
firmly-traced, unerring outline. 

While the Florentine and Umbro-Tuscan masters 
were perfecting the arts of accurate design, 
a similar direction towards scientific studies 
was given to the painters of Northern Italy at Padua. 
The influence, in this direction, of Francesco Squar- 
tione was considerable. It is clear that he was himself 
less an artist than an amateur of painting, with a turn 
for teaching, and a conviction, based upon the human- 


Squarcione. 


222 THE FINE ARTS. 


istic instincts of his age, that the right way of learning 
was by imitation of the antique. During the course of 
his career he is said to have taught no less than 137 
pupils, training his apprentices by the exhibition of 
casts and drawings, and giving them instruction in the 
science of perspective. 

From his school issued the mighty Andrea Mantegna, 
whose life-work was one of the most weighty 
moments in the history of modern art. 
He was born near Padua in 1431, and it is probable 
that he was the son of a small Lombard farmer. 
Studying the casts and drawings collected by Squar- 
cione, the young Mantegna found congenial exercise 
for his peculiar gifts. His early frescoes in the 
Eremitani at Padua look as though they had been 
painted from statues or clay models, carefully selected 
for the grandeur of their forms, the nobility of their 
attitudes, and the complicated beauty of their drapery. 
His inspiration was clearly derived from the antique. 
The beauty of classical bas-relief entered deep into his 
soul and ruled his imagination. In later life he spent 
his acquired wealth in forming a collection of Greek 
and Roman antiquities. He was, moreover, the friend 
of students, eagerly absorbing the knowledge brought 
to light by Ciriac of Ancona, Flavio Biondo, and other 
antiquaries; and so completely did he assimilate the 
materials of scholarship that the spirit of a Roman 
seemed to be incarnate in him. 

Without attempting a detailed history of painting 
Gentile da inthis period of divided energy and diverse © 
Fabriano. = effort, it is needful to turn aside for a 
moment and to notice those masters who remained 
comparatively uninfluenced by the scholastic studies of 


Mantegna. 


THE FINE ARTS. 223 


their contemporaries. Of these the earliest and most 
notable was Gentile da Fabriano, the last yg 

great painter of the Gubbian school, and Angelico. 
Fra Angelico, who, of all the painters of this period, 
most successfully resisted the persuasions of the Re- 
naissance, and perfected an art that owned little sym- 
pathy with the external world. He thought it a sin to 
study or to imitate the naked form, and his most 
beautiful faces seem copied from angels seen in visions, 
not from any sons of men. 

Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Fra Angelico, but in 
no sense the continuator of his tradition, ponogo 
exhibits the blending of several styles by a Gozzoli. 
genius of less creative than assimilative force. Thathe 
was keenly interested in the problems of perspective and 
foreshortening, and that none of the knowledge col- 
lected by his fellow-workers had escaped him, is suffi- 
ciently proved by his frescoes at Pisa. His composi- 
tions are rich in architectural details, not always chosen 
with pure taste, but painted with an almost infantile 
delight in the magnificence of buildings. 

Another painter favored by the Medici was Fra 
Filippo Lippi, of the Carmine, whose pleas- 
ure-loving temperament led him into irregu- F*4 Filippo 

. , ‘ das ippl. 
larities inconsistent with a monastic life. 
It can scarcely be doubted that the schism between 
his practice and profession served to debase and vul- 
garize a genius of fine imaginative quality, while the 
uncongenial work of decorating choirs and painting 
altar-pieces limed the wings of his swift spirit with the 
dulness of routine that savored of hypocrisy. Fiippino 
Whether Filippino Lippi was in truth his son Lippi. 
by Lucrezia Buti, a novice he is said to haye carried 


224 THE FINE ARTS. 


from her cloister in Prato, has been called in question 
by recent critics; but they adduce no positive argu- 
ments for discrediting the story of Vasari. There can, 
however, be no doubt that to the Frate, whether he was 
his father or only his teacher, Filippino owed his style. 

Sandro Botticelli, the other disciple of Fra Lippo, 
bears a name of greater mark. He is one 
of those artists, much respected in their own 
days, who suffered eclipse from the superior splendor of 
immediate successors, and to whom, through sympathy 
stimulated by prolonged study of the fifteenth century, 
we have of late paid tardy and perhaps exaggerated 
honors. His fellow-workers seem to have admired him 
as an able draughtsman gifted with a rare if whimsical 
imagination ; but no one recognized in him a leader of 
his age. For us he has an almost unique value as rep- 
resenting the interminglement of antique and modern 
fancy at amoment of transition—as embodying in some 
of his pictures the subtlest thought and feeling of men 
for whom the yee myths were beginning to live once 
more, while new guesses were timidly hazarded in the 
sphere of orthodoxy. 

The biography of Piero di Cosimo forms one of the 
Piero di most amusing chapters in Vasari, who has 
Cosimo. taken great delight in noting Piero’s quaint, 
humorous and eccentric habits, and whose description 
of a Carnival triumph devised by him is one of our 
most precious documents in illustration of Renaissance 
pageantry. The point that connects him with Botti- 
celli is the romantic treatment of classical mythology, — 
best exemplified in his pictures of Perseus and Androm- 
eda in the Uffizi, and of the murdered Procris watched 
by a Satyr in our National Gallery. 


Botticelli. 


THE FINE ARTS. 225 


It remains to speak of the painter who closes and at 
the same time gathers up the whole tradi- 
tion of this period. Domenico Ghirlandajo 
deserves the place of honor, not because he had the 
strongest passion, the subtlest fancy, the loftiest 
imagination—for in these points he was excelled by 
some one or another of his contemporaries or prede- 
cessors—but because his intellect was the most com- 
prehensive and his mastery of art the most complete. 
His life lasted from 1449 to 1498, and he did not 
distinguish himself as a painter till he was past thirty. 
It is almost with reluctance that a critic feels obliged 
to name this powerful but prosaic painter as the Giotto 
of the fifteenth century in Florence, the tutelary angel 
of an age inaugurated by Masaccio. He was a con- 
summate master of the science collected by his prede- 
cessors. No one surpassed him in the use of fresco. 
His orderly composition, in the distribution of figures 
and the use of architectural accessories, is worthy of 
all praise; his portraiture is dignified and powerful, 
his choice of form and treatment of drapery noble. 
Yet we cannot help noting his deficiency in the finer 
sense of beauty, the absence of poetic inspiration 07 
feeling in his work, the commonplaceness of his color, 
and his wearisome reiteration of calculated effects. 
Who, however, but Ghirlandajo could have composed 
the frescoes of S. 7a at S. Gemignano, of the Death 
of S. Francis in 8. Trinita at Florence, or that of the 
Birth of the Virgin in 8. Maria Novella? 

The Renaissance, so far as painting is concerned, 
may be said to have culminated between the The culmi- 
years 1470 and 1550, The thirty years at nation of 


Renais- 
the close of the fifteenth century may sance art. 


15 


Ghirlandajo. 


226 THE FINE ARTS. 


be taken as one epoch in this climax of the art, 
while the first half of the sixteenth forms a second. 
Within the former falls the best work of Mantegna, 
Perugino, Francia, the Bellini, Signorelli, and Fra Bar- 
tolommeo. To the latter we may assign Michael 
Angelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, Titian, and 
Andrea del Sarto. Lionardo da Vinci, though belong- 
ing chronologically to the former epoch, ranks first 
among the masters of the second ; and to this also may 
be given Tintoretto, though his life extended far beyond 
it to the last years of the century. 

The place occupied by Perugino in the evolution of 
Italian painting is peculiar. In the middle 
of a positive and worldly age, declining fast 
to frigid scepticism and political corruption, he set the 
final touch of technical art upon the devotion trans- 
mitted from earlier and more enthusiastic centuries. The 
flower of Umbrian piety blossomed in the masterpieces 
of his youth, and faded into dryness in the affectations 
of his manhood. In our National Gallery we have in 
a triptych one of his sincerest devotional oil pictures. 
His frescoes of .S. Sebastian at Panicale, and of the 
Crucifixion at Florence, are tolerably well known 
through reproductions ; while the Viscon of S. Bernard 
at Munich and the Piefd in the Pitti Gallery are famil- 
jar to all travelled students of Italian painting. 

‘The influence of Perugino upon. Italian art was 
powerful though transitory. He formed a 
band of able pupils, among whom was the 
great Raphael; and though Raphael speedily aban- 
doned his master’s narrow footpath through the fields of 
painting, he owed to Perugino the invaluable berefit of 
training in solid technical methods and tracitions of 


Perugino. 


Raphael. 


— ee 


THE FINE ARTS. 227 


pure taste. The life and work of this supreme artist 
have been so fully and ably handled by various writers, 
and the subjects he treated are so much the common 
property of even the least educated, that we are hardly 
called upon, in the space at our disposal, to do more than 
allude to the school in which his genius first began to 
display itself. Of other scholars of Perugino, Bernardo 
Pinturicchio can also alone be mentioned. 
A thorough naturalist, though saturated with 
the mannerism of the Umbrian school, Pinturicchio was 
not distracted either by scientific or ideal aims from the 
clear and fluent presentation of contemporary man- 
ners and customs. He isa kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, 
who brings us here and there in close relation to the 
men of his own time, and has, in consequence, aspecial 
value for the student of Renaissance life. 

There are still two painters who come within the 
limits of the fifteenth century that we can Francesco 
only glance at. Francesco Raibolini, sur- Francia. 
named Francia from his master in the goldsmith’s art, 
was one of the most sincerely pious of Christian 
painters, and we possess a good example of his style 
in the Dead Christ in our National Gallery. In order 
to be rightly known, his numerous pictures at Bologna 
should be studied by all lovers of the guattrocento style 
in its most delightful moments. 

Bartolommeo di Paolo dei Fattorino, better known 
as Baccio della Porta or Fra Bartolommeo, ,,. por 
forms at Florence the connecting link be- tolommeo. 
tween the artists of the earlier Renaissance and the 
golden age. By chronological reckoning he is nearly 
a quarter of a century later than Lionardo da Vinci, 
and is the exact contemporary of Michael Angelo. It 


Pinturicchio, 


228 THE FINE ARTS. 


was in Cosimo Rosselli’s dottega that he made acquaint 
ance with Mariotto Albertinelli, who became his inti- 
mate friend and fellow-worker, in spite of their dis- 
agreements in politics and religion. Albertinelli was 
wilful, obstinate, a partisan of the Medici, 
and a loose liver. Bartolommeo was gen- 
tle, yielding, and industrious. He fell under the influ- 
ence of Savonarola, and took the cowl of the Domini- 
cans. So firm was the bond of friendship established 
in boyhood between this ill-assorted couple, that they 
did not part company until 1512, three years before 
Albertinelli’s death, and five before that of Bartolommeo. 
Albertinelli’s Sa/u¢ation in the Uffiziyields no point of 
grace and vigor to any of his more distinguished con- 
temporary’s paintings. As acolorist Fra Bartolommeo 
is superior to any of his rivals in the school of Florence. 
Few painters of any age have combined harmony of 
tone so perfectly with brilliance and richness. 

We have now reached the great age of the Italian 


Albertinelli. 


The four Renaissance in art—the age in which, not 
greatest counting for the moment Venice, four most 
masters. 


remarkable men gathered up all that had 
hitherto been achieved in art since the days of Pisano 
and Giotto, adding such illumination from the sunlight 
of their inborn genius that in them the world forever 
sees what art can do. Lionardo da Vinci was born in 
Valdarno in 1452, and died in France in 1519. Mi- 
chael Angelo Buonarroti was born at Caprese, in the 
Casentino, in 1475, and died at Rome in 1564, having 
outlived the lives of his great peers by nearly half a 
century. Raphael Santi was born at Urbino in 1483, 
and died in Rome in 1520. Antonio Allegri was born 
at Correggio in 1494. and died there in 1534. Te 


J 


THE FINE ARTS. 229 


these four men, each in his own degree and according 
to his own peculiar quality of mind, the fulness of the 
Renaissance in its power and freedom was revealed. 
In their work posterity still may read the meaning of 
that epoch, differently rendered according to their dif- 
ferent gifts, but comprehended in its unity by study of 
the four together. 

It was a fact of the greatest importance for the 
development of the fine arts in Italy, that »,, 
painting in Venice reached maturity later Venetian 
than in Florence. Owing to this circum- 5¢2ool. 
stance one chief aspect of the Renaissance, its material 
magnificence and freedom, received consummate treat- 
ment at the hands of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. 
To idealize the sensualities of the external universe, to 
achieve for color what the Florentines had done for 
form, to invest the worldly grandeur of human life at 
ene of its most gorgeous epochs with the dignity of 
the highest art, was what these great artists were 
called on to accomplish. Their task could not have 
been so worthily performed in the fifteenth century as 
in the sixteenth, if the development of the esthetic 
sense had been more premature among the Venetians. 

It is in the heart of Venice, in the House of the Re 
public, that the Venetian painters, consid- The pueal 
ered as the interpreters of worldly splendor, Palace. 
fulfilled their function with the most complete success. 
Centuries contributed to make the Ducal Palace what 
itis. The massive colonnades and Gothic loggias of 
the external basement date from the thirteenth cen- 
tury; their sculpture belongs to the age when Niccolo 
Pisani’s genius was in the ascendant. The square 
fabric of the palace, so beautiful in the irregularity of 


230 THE FINE ARTS. 


its pointed windows, so singular in its mosaic diapet 
of pink and white, was designed at the same early 
period. The inner court and the facade that overhangs 
the lateral canal display the handiwork of Sansovino. 
The halls of the palace—spacious chambers where the 
senate assembled, where ambassadors approached the 
Doge, where the Savi deliberated, where the Council 
of Ten conducted their inquisition—are walled and 
roofed with pictures of inestimable value. 

Long before Venetian painting reached a climax in 
Thenote of te decorative triumphs of the Ducal Palace, 
Venetian the masters of the school had formed a 
artists. style expressive of the spirit of the Renais- 
sance, considered as the spirit of free enjoyment 
and living energy. To trace the history of Venetian 
painting is to follow through the several stages 
the growth of that mastery over color and sensu- 
ous beauty which was perfected in the works of 
Titian and his contemporaries. Under the Vivarini 
of Murano, the Venetian school in its infancy began 
with a selection from the natural world of all that 
struck them as most brilliant. No other painters of 
their age in Italy employed such glowing colors, or 
showed a more marked predilection for the imitation 
of fruits, rich stuffs, architectural canopies, jewels, and 
landscape backgrounds. ‘Their piety, unlike the mysti- 
cism of the Sienese and the deep feeling of the Floren- 
tine masters, is somewhat superficial and conventional. 

What the Vivarini began, the three Bellini, Jacopo 
Their sub- and his sons Gentile and Giovanni, with 
docte Ce Crivelli, Carpaccio, Mansueti, Basaiti, 
the locality. Catena, Cima da Conegliano, Bissolo, Cor- 
degliaghi, continued. Bright costumes, distinct and 


ties 


THE FINE ARTS. 231 


sunny landscapes, broad backgrounds of architect: 
ure, large skies, polished armor, gilded cornices, 
young faces of fisherboys and country girls, grave 
faces of old men brown with sea-wind and sunlight, 
withered faces of women hearty in a hale old age, 
the strong manhood of Venetian senators, the dignity 
of patrician ladies, the gracefulness of children, the 
amber-colored tresses of the daughters of the Adriatic 
and lagoons—these are the source of inspiration to the 
Venetians of the second period. Mantegna, a few 
miles distant, at Padua, was working out his ideal of 
severely classical design. Yet he scarcely touched the 
manner of the Venetians with his influence, though 
Gian Bellini was his brother-in-law and pupil, and 
though his genius, in grasp of matter and in manage- 
ment of composition, soared above his neighbors. 
Lionardo da Vinci, at Milan, was perfecting his prob- 
lems of psychology in painting, offering to the world 
solutions of the greatest difficulties in the delineation of 
the spirit by expression. Yet not atrace of Lionardo’s 
subtle play of light and shadow upon thoughtful feat- 
ures can be discerned in the work of the Bellini. For 
them the mysteries of the inner and the outer world 
had no attraction. The externals of a full and vivid 
existence fascinated their imagination. They under- 
took to paint only what they could see. Very in- 
structive are the wall-pictures of this period, painted 
not in fresco but on canvas by Carpaccio Cornudda 
and Gentile Bellini, for the decoration of the and Gentile 
Scuole of S. Ursula and S. Croce—the halls Bellini. 

of meeting for companies named after patron saints. 
Not only do these bring before us the life of Venice 
in its manifold variety, but they illustrate the 


232 THE FINE ARTS. 


tendency of the Venetian masters to express the actual 
world rather than to formulate an ideal of the fancy. 
This realism, if the name can be applied to pictures so 
poetical as those of Carpaccio, is not, like the Floren- 
tine realism, hard and scientific. A natural feeling for 
grace and a sense of romance inspire the artist, and 
breathe from every figure that he paints. 

Giorgione, did we but possess enough of his authentic 
works to judge by, would be found the first 
painter of the true Renaissance among the 
Venetians, the inaugurator of the third and great period. 
He died at the age of thirty-six, the inheritor of un- 
fulfilled renown. ‘Time has destroyed the last vestige 
of his frescoes, and criticism has reduced the number 
of his genuine easel pictures to half a dozen. Of his 
undisputed pictures, the grandest is the Monk at the 
Clavichord in the Pitti Palace at Florence. Fate has 
dealt less unkindly with Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo 
Veronese. ‘The works of these great artists, in whom 
the Venetian Renaissance attained completion, have 
been preserved in large numbers and in excellent con- 
dition. 

Titian holds, in relation to the Venetian school, the 
position held by Raphael among his contem- 
poraries in the rest of Italy, and their 
works are in both cases so numerous and so equally 
well known that it is needless to give an account of 


Giorgione. 


Titian. 


them in the one case more than in the other. To- © 


gether, these supreme artists may be termed a double- 
star in that bright field of genius, where the mode ’in 
which their faculties are used appeals in an equal 
degree to the imagination, and to our sense of wonder 
and delight. 


———- < 


THE FINE ARTS. 233 


Tintoretto, called by the Italians the thunderbolt of 
painting, because of his vehement impul- 
siveness and rapidity of execution, soars 
above his brethren by the faculty of pure imagination. ° 
It was he who brought to perfection the poetry of 
chiaroscuro, expressing moods of passion and emotion 
in brusque lights, luminous half-shadows, and semi- 
opaque darkness. He, too, engrafted on the calm and 
natural Venetian manner something of the Michael 
Angelesque sublimity, and sought to vary by dramatic 
movement the romantic motives of his school. In 
his work, more than in that of his contemporaries, 
Venetian art ceased to be decorative and _ idyllic, 
Veronese elevated pageantry to the height of 
serious art. His domain is noonday sunlight 
ablaze on sumptuous dresses and Palladian architecture. 
Where Tintoretto is dramatic, he is scenic. ‘Titian, in 
a wise harmony, continuing the traditions of Bellini 
and Giorgione, with a breadth of treatment peculiar to 
himself, gave to color in landscape and the human 
form a sublime yet sensuous poetry no other painter in 


Tintoretto, 


Veronese. 


the world has reached. Among the Venetian painters, 


it may be observed in conclusion, there was no con- 
flict between art and religion, no reaction against 
previous pietism, no perplexity of conscience, no con- 
fusion of aims. ‘Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese were 
children of the people, men of the world, men of 
pleasure; wealthy, urbane, independent, pious—all 
these by turns ; but they were never mystics, scholars, 
or philosophers. In their esthetic ideal religion found 
a place, nor was sensuality rejected; but the religion 
was sane and manly, the sensuality was vigorous and 
virile: Not the intellectual greatness of the Renais- 


234 LHE FINE ARTS. 


sance, but its happiness and freedom, was what they 
represented, 

It was the special good fortune of the pupils of 
Lionardoda Lionardo da Vinci that what he actually 
inci, accomplished bore no proportion to the 
suggestiveness of his teaching and the fertility of his 
invention. Of finished work he left but little to 
the world; while his sketches and designs, the teeming 
thoughts of his creative brain, were an inestimable 
heritage. It remained for his disciples, each in his 
own sphere, with inferior powers and feebler intellect, 
to perpetuate the genius of their master. Thus 
the spirit of Lionardo continued to live in Lom- 
bardy after he was dead. Andrea Salaino, Marco 
d’Oggiono, Francesco Melzi, Giovanni Antonio Bel- 
. traffio, and Cesare da Sesto were all of them skilled 
workmen. But two painters of this school, Bernardino 
Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari, demand more 
particular notice. Without Lionardo it is 
difficult to say what Luini would have _ been, 
so thoroughly did he appropriate his teacher’s 
type of face and refinement of execution. And yet 
iauinl stands on his own ground, in no sense an 
imitator, with a genius more simple and _ idyllic 
than Da Vinci’s. Little conception of his charm 
can be formed by those who have not seen his frescoes 
in the Brera and S. Maurizio Maggiore at Milan, in the 
church of the Angeli at Lugano, or in the pilgrimage 
Gaudenzip ChurchofSaronno. Gaudenzio Ferrari was 
Ferrari. a genius of a different order, more robust, 
more varied, but less single-minded than Luini. 
His style reveals the influences of a many-sided, 
ill-assimilated education, blending the manners of 


Luini. 


on 


THE FINE ARTS. 235 


Bramantino, Lionardo, and Raphael without proper 
fusion. His dramatic scenes from sacred history, rich 
in novel motives and exuberantly full of invention, 
crowd the churches of Vercelli; while a whole epic of 
the Passion is painted in fresco above the altar of S. 
Maria delle Grazie at Varallo, covering the wall from 
basement to ceiling. The prodigality of power dis- 
played by Ferrari makes up for much of crudity in style 
and confusion in aim ; nor can we refuse the tribute of 
warmest admiration to a master who, when the schools 
of Rome and Florence were sinking into emptiness and 
bombast, preserved the fire of feeling for serious 
themes. 

Passing from Lionardo to Raphael, we find the reverse 
of what has been noticed with regard to the influence 
of the master and the suggestiveness of his No inspira- 
teaching. Raphael worked out the mine of tion de- 

‘ : scended 
his own thought so thoroughly, and carried s.5.4 
his style to such perfection, that he left Raphael. 
nothing untried for his followers. When he died, in- 
spiration seemed to pass from them as color fades 
from clouds at sunset. But the times were also against 
them. The patrons of art required show far more than 
thought, and this the pupils of Raphael were compe- 
tent to supply without much effort. Giulio gino 
Romano alone, by dint of robust energy and. Romano. 
lurid fire of fancy, to be seen through the smoke of his 
coarser nature, achieved a not undeserving triumph. 
His Palazzo del Te will always remain the monument of 
a specific moment in Renaissance history, since it is 
adequate to the intellectual conditions of a race demor- 
alized, but living still, with largeness and a sense of 
grandeur. 


236 THE FINE ARTS. 


Michael Angelo, whose history and great achieve 
Sebastian ments will not admit of compression, formed 
del Piombo, no school in the strict sense of the word; 
Venusti, ee 
and Daniele Yet his influence was not the less felt on 
da Volterra. that account, nor less powerful than Ra- 
phael’s in the same direction. During his man- 
hood Sebastian del Piombo, Marcello Venusti, and 
Daniele da Volterra had endeavored to add the 
charm of oil-coloring to his designs; and long be- 
fore his death the seduction of his mannerism be 
gan to exercise a fatal charm for all the schools 
of Italy. As his fame increased, his peculiarities 
grew more defined; so that imitators fixed precisely 
upon that which sober critics now regard as a deduc- 
tion from his greatness. They fancied they were tread- 
ing in his footsteps, and using the grand manner, when 
they covered church roofs and canvases with sprawling 
figures in distorted attitudes. 

Correggio, again, though he can hardly be said to have 
founded a school, was destined to exercise 
wide and perilous influence over a host of 
manneristic imitators. Francesco Mazzolo, called I] Par- 
UPermi-  Migianino, followed him so closely that his 
gianinoand frescoes at Parma are hardly distinguish- 
Baroceion able from the master’s; while Federigo 
Baroccio at Urbino endeavored to preserve the 
sensuous and almost childish sweetness of his style 
in its integrity. But the real attraction of Correggio was 
only felt when the new Jarocco architecture called for a: 
new kind of decoration. Every cupola throughout the 
length and breadth of Italy began then to be painted 
with rolling clouds and lolling angels. What the wits 
of Parma had once stigmatized as a ragodt of frogs 


Correggio. 


THE FINE ARTS. 237 


now seemed the only possible expression for celestial 
ecstasy; and to delineate the joy of heaven upon 
those multitudes of domes and semi-domes was a 
point of religious etiquette. At the same time the 
Caracci made Correggio’s style the object 
of more serious study; and the history of 
Bolognese painting shows what was to be derived 
from this master by intelligent and conscientious work- 
men. 

We have been speaking chiefly of the errors of artists 
copying the external qualities of their great ,narea del 
predecessors. It is refreshing to turn from Sarto. 
the efigont of the so-called Roman school to masters 
in whom the flame of the Renaissance still burned 
brightly. Andrea del Sarto, the pupil of Piero di 
Cosimo, but more nearly related in style to Fra Barto- 
lommeo, was himself a contemporary of Raphael and 
Correggio. To make a just estimate of his achieve- 
ment is a task of no small difficulty. The Italians 
called him “il pittore senza errori,”’ or the faultless 
painter, What they meant by this must have been 
that, in all the technical requirements of art, in 
drawing, composition, handling of fresco and oils, 
disposition of draperies and feeling for light and 
shadow, he was above criticism. As a colorist he 
went further and produced more beautiful effects 
than any Florentine before him. What he lacked 
was precisely the most precious gift—inspiration, 
depth of emotion, energy of thought. Yet there 
is no affectation, no false taste, no trickery in his 
style. His workmanship is always solid, his hand 
anerring. ; 


The Caracci, 


238 THE FINE ARTS. 


Among Del Sarto’s followers it will be enough to 


e . ee *9 e é 
Francia- mention Franciabigio, Vasari’s favorite in 


pcb ao -«ETeSCO_ painting, Rosso de’ Rossi, who 
Rossi, carried the Florentine manner into France, 
Pontormo, 


and Pontormo, the masterly painter of 
portraits. In the historical pictures of these men, 
whether sacred or secular, it is clear how much was 
done for Florentine art by Fra Bartolommeo and 
Andrea del Sarto, independently of Michael Angelo 
and Lionardo da Vinci. Angelo Bronzino, the pupil of 
Pontormo, is chiefly valuable for his portraits. 
Hard and cold, yet obviously true to life, they 
form a gallery of great interest for the historian of 
Duke Cosimo’s reign. His frescoes and allegories 
illustrate the defects that have been pointed out in the 
imitators of Raphael and Michael Angelo, 

Siena, after a long period of inactivity, received a 
fresh impulse at the same time as Florence. 
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, or Razzi, called Il 
Sodoma, born at Vercelli about 1477, studied under 
Lionardo da Vinci, and then removed to Rome, where 
he became a friend of Raphael. These double influ- 
ences determined a style that never lost its own origin- 
ality. With what delicacy and nazveté, almost like a 
second Luini, but with more of humor and sensuous- 
ness, he approached historic themes may be seen in his 
frescoes at Monte Oliveto, near Siena. These are 
superior to his frescoes in the Farnesina at Rome. 
Sodoma’s influence at Siena, where he lived a pictur-. 
esque life, delighting in his horses and surrounding 
himself with strange four-footed pets of all sorts, soon 
produced a school of worthy masters. Girolamo del 
Pacchia, Domenico Beccafumi, and Baldassare Peruzzi, 


Bronzino, 


Il Sodoma., 


THE FINE ARTS. 239 


though they owed much to the stimulus of his example, 
followed him in no servile spirit. 

To mention the remaining schools of Italy in detail 
would be wearisome. True art still flour- 
ished at Ferrara, where Garofalo endeavored 
to carry on the Roman manner of Raphael without the 
necessary strength or ideality, but also without the soul- 
less insincerity of the mannerists. His best quality was 
coloring, gemlike and rich; but this found little scope for 
exercise in the dry and labored style he 
affected. Dosso Dossi fared better, per- 
haps, through never having experienced the se- 
ductions of Rome. His glowing color and quaint 
fancy give the attraction of romance to many of his 
pictures. : 

Cremona, at this epoch, had a school of painting 
influenced almost equally by the Venetians, gtnor 
the Milanese, and the Roman mannerists, schools. 
The Campi family covered those grave Lombard vaults 
with stucco, fresco, and gilding, in a style only just 
removed from the darocco. Brescia and Bergamo 
remained within the influence of Venice, producing 
work of nearly first-rate quality in Moretto, Romanino, 
and Lorenzo Lotto. Moroni, the pupil of 
Moretto, was destined to become one of the 
most powerful character painters of the modern world, 
and to enrich the studies of historians and artists with a 
series of portraits impressive by their fidelity to the 
spirit of the sixteenth century at its conclusion. Venice 
herself, at this period, was still producing masterpieces 
of the genuine Renaissance. But the decline into man- 
nerism, caused by circumstances similar to those at 
Rome, was not far distant. 


Garofalo, 


Dosso Dossi. 


Moroni, 


240 THE FINE ARTS. z 


It may seem strange to those who have visited the 
The picture galleries of Italy, and have noticed 
decadence how large a number of painters flourished 
of art. after 1550, that we should have to look 
upon the last half of the sixteenth century as a period 
of decadence. This it was, however, in a deep and 
true sense of the word. The force of the Renaissance 
was exhausted, and a time of relaxation had to be passed 
through before the reaction known as the counter- 
reformation could make itself felt in art. Then, and 
not till then, a new spiritual impulse produced a new 
style. This secondary growth of painting began to 
flourish at Bologna in accordance with fresh laws of 
taste. Religious sentiments of a different order had to 
be expressed; society had undergone a change, and 
the arts were governed by a genuine, if far inferior, in- 
spiration. Meanwhile, the Renaissance in Italy, under 
the aspect we have been considering, had come to an 
end. But we have now to retrace our steps, and to 
take, to some perhaps, a more interesting path through 
another field, before we reach the same point of view, 
and see the horizon darkening in every quarter. 





XITI. 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR 
LITERATURE, 


HE first and most brilliant age of Italian literature 

ended with Boccaccio,who traced thc lines on which 
the future labors of the nation were conducted. It was 
succeeded, as we have seen, by nearly a century of 
Greek and Latin scholarship. To study the master- 
pieces of Dante and Petrarch, or to practise their lan- 
guage, was thought beneath the dignity of men like 
Valla, Poggio, or Pontano. But towards the close of 
the fifteenth century, chiefly through the influence of 
Lorenzo de’ Medici and his courtiers, a strong interest 
in the mother tongue revived. The vernacular litera- 
ture of the Renaissance, therefore, as compared with 
that of the expiring middle ages, was itself a renascence 
or revival, It reverted to the models furnished by 
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and combined them 
with the classics, which had for so long a time eclipsed 
their fame. The nation, educated by scholarship, and 
brought to a sense of its identity, resumed the vulgar 
tongue; and what had hitherto been Tuscan now 
became Italian. 

During the fifteenth century there was an almost 
complete separation between the cultivated mm, asuse 
classes and the people. Humanists, intent of the ver- 

: : nacular 
upon fag exploration of the classics, scholars, 
I 


242 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


deemed it below their dignity to use the vulgar tongue, 
They thought and wrote in Latin, and had no time to 
bestow upon the education of the common folk, A 
polite public was formed, who in the courts of princes 
and the palaces of noblemen amused themselves with 
the ephemeral literature of pamphlets, essays, and 
epistles in the Latin tongue. For these well-educated 
readers Poggio and Pontano wrote their Latin novels, 
The same learned audience applauded the gladiators of 
the moment, Valla and Filelfo, when they descended 
into the arena and plied each other with pseudo-Cicero- 
nian invectives. To quit this refined circle and address 
the vulgar crowd was thought unworthy of a man of 
erudition. Only here and there a humanist of the first 
rank is found who, like Bruni, devoted a portion of his 
industry to the Italian lives of Dante and Petrarch, or, 
like Filelfo, lectured on the Divine Comedy, or, again, 
like Landino, composed a Dantesque commentary in the 
mother tongue. Moreover, Dante and Petrarch passed 
for almost classical ; and, in nearly all such instances 
of condescension, pecuniary interest swayed the scholar 
from his wonted orbit. It was want of skill in Latin, 
rather than love for his own idiom, that induced Ves- 
pasiano to pen his lives of great men in Italian. Not 
spontaneous inspiration, but the whim of a ducal 
patron, forced Filelfo to use ¢erza rima for his worth- 
less poem on S. John, and to write a commentary upon 
Petrarch in the vernacular. 

This attitude of learned writers produced a curious 
It affected obtuseness of critical insight. Niccold dei 
their criti-  Niccoli, though a Florentine, called Dante 
caltaste. 4 poet for bakers and cobblers.” Pico 
della Mirandola preferred Lorenzo de’ Medici’s verses 


a 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 243 


to Petrarch. Landino complained—not, indeed, with- 
out good reason in that century—that the vulgar 
language could boast of no great authors. Filippo 
Villani, in the proem to his biographies, apologized for 
his father Matteo, who exerted humble faculties to his 
best ability. Lorenzo de’ Medici defended himself for 
paying attention to an idiom which men of good judg- 
ment blamed for “‘lowness, incapacity, and unworthi- 
ness to deal with high themes or grave material.” 
Benedetto Varchi, who lived to be an excellent though 
somewhat cumbrous writer of Italian prose, gives this 
account of his early training: “ I remember that, when 
I was a lad, the first and strictest rule of a father to his 
sons, and of a master to his pupils, was that they should 
on no account and for no object read anything in the 
vulgar speech; and Master Guasparre Mariscotti da 
Marradi, who was my teacher in grammar, a man of 
hard and rough but pure and excellent manners, having 
once heard, I know not how, that Schiatta di Bernardo 
Bagnesi and I were wont to read Petrarch on the sly, 
gave us a sound rating for it, and nearly expelled us 
from his school.” Some of Varchi’s own stylistic pedan- 
tries may be attributed to this Latinizing education. 

Lorenzo de’ Medici and Angelo Poliziano reunited 
the two currents of Italian literature, ple- « gantori da 
beian and cultivated, by giving the form of Piazza.” 
refined art to popular lyrics of divers kinds, to 
the rustic idyll, and to the sacred drama. Another 
member of the Medicean circle, Luigi Pulci, aided the 
same work of restoration by taking up the rude tales of 
the Cantori da Piazza, and producing the first romantic 
poem of the Renaissance. 


244 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


_Of all the numerous forms of literature, three seem 
The Novella to have been specially adapted to the 
andIdyll. Italians of this period. They were the 
Novella, the Romantic Epic, and the Idyll. With 
regard to the JVovella and the Idyll, it is enough 
in this place to say that we may reckon them indige- 
nous to modern Italy. They suited the temper of the 
people and the age; the JVove//a furnishing the fit 
artistic vehicle for Italian realism and objectivity ; the 
Idyll presenting a point of contact with the literature 
of antiquity, and expressing that calm sensibility to 
natural beauty which was so marked a feature of the 
national character amid the distractions of the sixteenth 
century. The Idyll and the /Vove//a formed, moreover, 
the most precious portion of Boccaccio’s legacy. . 

The Romantic Epic, on the other hand, had no 
Romantic spontaneous origin, but was imported from 
Epic. the French. At first sight the material of 
the Carolingian Cycle, the romantic tales of Roland 
and of Charlemagne, which formed the basis of the 
most considerable narrative poems of the Renaissance, 
seems uncongenial to the Italians. Feudalism had 
never taken a firm hold on the country. Chivalry was 
more a pastime of the upper classes, more consciously 
artificial, than it had been in France or even England. 
The interest of the Italians in the Crusades was rather 
commercial than religious, and the people were not 
stirred to their centre by the impulse to recover the 
Holy Sepulchre. The enthusiasm of piety which 
animated the northern myth of Charlemagne was not 
characteristic of the race that, earlier than the rest of 
Europe, had indulged in speculative scepticism and 
sarcastic raillery ; nor were the marvels of the legend 





THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 245 


congenial to their positive and practical imagination, 
turned ever to the beauties of the plastic arts. 

It seemed, then, as though the great foreign epics, 
which had been transported into Italy dur- », public 
ing the thirteenth century, would find no interest in 
permanent place in southern literature after eae 
the close of the fourteenth. The cultivated spired the 
classes, in their eagerness to discover and Poets. 
appropriate the ancient authors, lost sight of peer and 
paladin. Even Boccaccio alluded contemptuously to 
chivalrous romance, as fit reading only for idle women ; 
and when he attempted an epical poem in octave 
stanzas, he chose a tale of ancient Greece. Still, in 
spite of these apparent drawbacks, in spite of learned 
scorn and polished indifference, the Carolingian Cycle 
had takena firm hold upon the popular fancy. <A spe- 
cial class of literary craftsmen reproduced its principal 
episodes in prose and verse for the multitudes gathered 
on the squares to hear their recitations, or for readers 
in the workshop and the country farm. Now, in the 
renascence of the native literature, poets of the highest 
rank were destined to receive the same material from 
the people, and to give it a form appropriate to their 
own culture. This fact must not be forgotten by the 
student of Pulci, Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto. The 
romantic epics of the golden age had a plebeian origin; 
and the masters of verse who devoted their best 
energies to that brilliant series of poems were dealing 
with legends which had taken shape in the imagination 
of the people, before they applied their own inventive 
faculties to the task of beautifying them with art un- 
rivalled for splendor and variety of fancy. This, and 
this alone, explains the anomalies of the Italian 


246 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


romantic epic—the mixture of burlesque with serious- 
ness, the irony and sarcasm alternating with gravity 
and pathos, the wealth of comic episodes, the inter- 
weaving of extraneous incidents, the antithesis between 
the professed importance of the subject-matter and the 
spirit of the poet who plays with it as if he felt its 
puerility—all the startling contrasts, in a word, which 
has made this glittering harlequin of art so puzzling to 
modern critics. 

Boccaccio, in his desire to fuse the classic and the 
The poets Medieval modes of thought and style, not 


first essayed merely adapted the periods of Latin to 
to put an- 


tiquesub- Italian prose, but also sought to treat an 
sree antique subject in the popular measure of 
dress. the octave stanza. His TZeseide is a nar- 


rative poem, in which the Greek hero plays a prominent 
part, while all the chiefs of Theban and Athenian legetd 
are brought upon the scene. Yet the main motive is a 
tale of love, and the language is as modern as need be. 
Writing to please the mistress of his heart, and emulous 
of epic fame, Boccaccio rejected the usual apostrophes 
and envoys of the Cantori da Banca, and constructed 
a poem divided into books. Poliziano approached the 
problem of fusing the antique and the modern from a 
different point of view. He adorned a courtly theme 
of his own day with phrases and decorative details bor- 
rowed from the classic authors, presenting in a series 
of brilliant pictures an epitome of ancient art. It re- 
mained for Pulci to develop, without classical ad- 
mixture, the elements of poetry existing in the popular 
Italian romances. The Morgante Maggiore is, there. 
fore, more thoroughly and purely Tuscan than any work 
of equal magnitude that had preceded it. This is its 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 247 


great merit, and this gives it a place apart among the 
hybrid productions of the Renaissance, 

The Pulci were a noble family, reduced in circum- 
stances, and attached to the Casa Medici 
by ties of political and domestic dependency. 
The most famous of three brothers was Luigi, whose cor: 
respondence with Lorenzo de’ Medici proves him to 
have been a kind of court poet in the palace of the Via 
Larga, while the sonnets he exchanged with Matteo 
Franco breathe, in their scurrility and slang, the ple- 
beian spirit of Burchiello, the rhyming barber, whom 
we need not notice. He had a wild fantastic tempera- 
ment, inclining to bold speculations on religious topics; 
tinctured with curiosity that took the form of magic art; 
bizarre in expression, yet withal so purely Florentine 
that his prose and verse are a mine of guattrocento 
idioms gathered from the jargon of the streets and 
squares. Of humanistic culture he seems to have pos- 
sessed but little. Still, the terms of familiar inter- 
course on which he lived with Poliziano, Palmieri, and 
Toscanelli enabled him to gather much of the learning 
then in vogue. The theological and scientific specu- 
lations of the age are transmitted to us in his comic 
stanzas with a vernacular raciness that renders them 
doubly interesting. 

Pulci dealt with the Carolingian Cycle in what may 
be termed a Jdourgeois spirit. Whether 
humorous or earnest, he maintained the tone 
of Florentine society ; and his M/organte reflects the pe- 
culiar conditions of the Medicean circle at the date of 
its composition. The second great poem on the same 
group of legends, Boiardo’s Orlando /nnamorato, trans- 
ports us into a very different social and intellectual 


ulci. 


Boiardo. 


248 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


atmosphere. The high-born Count of Scandiano, recit- 
ing his cantos in the huge square castle surrounded by 
its moat, which still survives to speak of mediaeval Italy 
in the midst of Ferrara, had but little in common with 
Luigi Pulci, whose Tuscan fun and satire amused the 
merchant-princes of the Via Larga. The value of the 
Orlando Innamorato for the student of Italian develop- 
ment is principally this, that it is the most purely chival- 
rous poem of the Renaissance. Composed before the 
French invasion, and while the classical revival was 
still unaccomplished, we find in it an echo of an earlier 
semi-feudal civility. Unlike the other literary per- 
formances of that age, which were produced for the 
most part by professional humanists, it was the work 
of a nobleman to whom feats of arms and the chase 
were familiar, and who disdained the common folk. 
Matteo Maria Boiardo was almost an exact con- 
His position temporary of Pulci. He was born about 
at Ferrara. 1434 at his hereditary fief of Scandiano, a 
village seven miles from Reggio at the foot of 
the Apennines, celebrated for its excellent vineyards. 
His mother was Lucia Strozzi, a member of the Fer- 
rarese house, connected by descent with the Strozzi of 
Florence. At the age of twenty-eight he married Tad- 
dea Gonzaga, daughter of the Count of Novellara. He 
lived until 1494, when he died at the same time as Pico 
and Poliziano, in the year of Charles VIII.’s invasion, 
two years after the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and 
four years before Ficino. These dates are not unim- 
portant, as fixing the exact epoch of Boiardo’s literary 
activity. At the court of Ferrara, where the Count of 
Scandiano enjoyed the friendship of Duke Borso and 
Duke Ercole, this bard of chivalry held a position 





THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 24g 


worthy of his noble rank and his great talents. The 
princes of the house of Este employed him as ambas- 
sador in missions of high trust and honor. He also 
administered for them the government of Reggio and 
Modena, their two chief subject cities. As a ruler he 
was celebrated for his clemency and for his indifference 
to legal formalities. 

Well versed in Greek and Latin literature, he trans 
lated into Italian Herodotus, parts of Xeno- y;, literary 
phon, the Golden Ass of Apuleius, and the works. 

Ass of Lucian. He also versified Lucian’s Zimon 
for the stage, and wrote Latin poems of fair 
merit. His lyrics, addressed to Antonia Caprara, prove 
that, like Lorenzo de’ Medici, he was capable of following 
the path of Petrarch without falling into Petrarchistic 
mannerism. But his literary fame depends less upon 
these minor works than on the Orlando Innamorato, 
a masterpiece of inventive genius which furnished 
Ariosto with the theme of the Orlando Furioso. With- 
out the /zuamorato the /urioso is meaningless. The 
handling and structure of the romance, the characters 
of the heroes and heroines, the conception of love and 
arms as the double theme of romantic poetry, the inter- 
polation of zove//e in the manner of Boccaccio, and the 
magic machinery by which the poem is conducted are 
due to the originality of Boiardo. Ariosto adopted his 
plot, continued the story where he left it, and brought 
it to a close; so that, taken together, both poems form 
one gigantic narrative of about 100,000 lines, which 
has for its subject the love and the marriage of Rug- 
giero and Bradamante, mythical progenitors of the 
Estensi. Yet because the style of Boiardo is rough and 
provincial, while that of Ariosto is by all consent 


250 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


“divine,” Boiardo has been almost forgotten by pos 
terity. 

Ariosto’s family was ancient and of honorable 
station in the Duchy of Ferrara, His 
father, Nicold, held offices of trust under 
Ercole I., and in the year 1472 was made Governor of 
Reggio, where he acquired property and married. His 
wife Daria Maleguzzi, gave birth at Reggio in 1474 to 
their first-born, Lodovico, the poet. At Reggio the boy 
spent seven years of childhood, removing with his 
father in 1481 to Rovigo. His education appears to 
have been carried on at Ferrara, where he learnt 
Latin but no Greek. This ignorance of Greek litera- 
ture placed him, like Machiavelli, somewhat at a 
disadvantage among men of culture in an age that set 
great store upon the knowledge of both ancient 
languages. He was destined for a legal career, but, 
like Petrarch and Boccaccio, after spending some use- 
less years in uncongenial studies, Lodovico prevailed 
upon his father to allow him to follow his strong bent 
for literature. In 1500 Nicolo died, leaving a family of 
five sons and five daughters, with property sufficient 
for the honor of his house but scarcely adequate to the 
needs of his numerous children. 

Lodovico, therefore, found himself, at the age of 
twenty-six, in the position of father to nine brothers 
and sisters, for whose education, start in life, and suit- 
able settlement he was called upon to arrange. The 
administration of his father’s estate, and the cares 
thus early thrust upon him, made the poet an exact 
man of business, and brought him acquainted with 
real life under its most serious aspects. He discharged 
his duties with prudence and fidelity, managing by 


Ariosto. 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 251 


economy to provide portions for his sisters and honor- 
able maintenance for his brothers out of their joint 
patrimony. 

The first three years after cis father’s death were 
spent by Ariosto in the neighborhood of 
Rous ean to this period af his life we ate aot 

gages 

may perhaps refer some of the love affairs ments. 
celebrated in his Latin poems. He held the cap- 
taincy of Canossa, a small sinecure involving no im- 
portant duties, since the castle of Canossa was even 
in those days aruin. In 1503 he entered the service 
of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, with whom he remained 
until 1517. He was placed upon the list of the car- 
dinal’s extraordinary servants, to be employed in mat- 
ters of confidence and delicacy, involving frequent 
journeys to all parts of Italy and ceremonial embas- 
sies. Ippolito urged him to take orders, with a view 
to his pecuniary advantage, but Ariosto refused to 
enter a state of life for which he felt no vocation. 
That Ippolito did not share the prevailing enthusiasm 
of his age for literary culture, seems pretty clear, and 
he failed to discover the unique genius of the man 
whom he had chosen for his confidential agent. It 
was not until their final rupture, caused by Ariosto’s 
refusal to undertake the Hungarian expedition in his 
master’s train, that the true greatness of the author of 
the Furioso was revealed. How shoulda dissolute and 
ill-conditioned cardinal have discerned that a dreamy 
poem in manuscript on the madness of Orlando would 
live as long as the eid, or that the flattering lies of 
his attendant would in after-ages turn the fierce glare 
of criticism and celebrity upon the darkest corners of 
his own history? We know, however, that he defrayed 


252 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERA TURE. 


the expenses of its publication, and reserved the right 
and profits of its sale to Ariosto. 

The Orlando Furioso was conceived and begun in 
Hisenjoye the year 1505. It was sent to press in 
page 1515; Giovanni Mazzochi del Bondeno 
Ferrara. published it in April, 1516. In 1518, having 
freed himself from Ippolito’s bondage, Ariosto entered 
the service of Duke Alfonso I. He occupied his 
own house in Ferrara; and the Duke, who recognized 
his great literary qualities and appreciated the new 
lustre conferred upon his family by the publication of 
the /urioso, left him in the undisturbed possession of 
his leisure. The next four years were probably the 
happiest of Ariosto’s life, for he had now at last secured 
independence and had entered upon the enjoyment of 
his fame. The Medici of Florence and Rome, and the 
ducal families of Urbino and Mantua, were pleased to 
number him among their intimate friends, and he re- 
ceived flattering acknowledgments of his poem from 
the most illustrious men of Italy. 

The few journeys he made at the request of Alfonso 
Hiscome- cCatried him to Florence, the head-quarters 


dies pro- of literary and artistic activity. At home, 
duced at , sae 
Forrara the time he spared from the revision of the 


and Rome. /urioso was partly devoted to the love 
affairs he carried on with jealous secrecy, and partly to 
the superintendence of the ducal theatre. The com- 
position of comedies amused him from his boyhood to 
his latest years. So early as 1493 he had accompanied 
Ercole I. to Pavia in order to play before Lodovico 
Sforza, and in the same year he witnessed the famous 
representation of the Menechmi at Ferrara. Some of 
his earliest essays in literature were translations of 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 253 


Latin comedies, now unfortunately lost. They were 
intended for representation, and, as exercises in the 
playwright’s art, they strongly influenced his style. 
His own Cassarza appeared for the first time at Ferrara 
in 1508; the Suffositi followed in 1509, and was re- 
produced at the Vatican in 1519. It took Leo’s fancy 
so much that he besought the author for another 
comedy. Ariosto, in compliance with this request, 
completed the egromante, which he had already had 
in hand during the previous ten years. The Zena was 
first represented at Ferrara in 1528, and the Scolastica 
was left unfinished at the poet’s death. What part 
Ariosto took in the presentation of his comedies is 
uncertain ; but it is probable that he helped in their 
performance, besides directing the stage and reciting 
the prologue. He thus acquired a practical acquaint- 
ance with theatrical management, and it was by his 
advice, and on plans furnished by him, that Alfonso 
built the first permanent stage at Ferrara in 1532. On 
the last day of that year, not long after its erection, the 
theatre was burned down. ‘These dates are important, 
since they prove that Ariosto’s connection with the 
stage as actor, playwright, and manager was continuous 
throughout his lifetime. 

Ariosto’s peaceful occupations at Ferrara were inter- 
rupted early in 1522 by a strange episode in His official 
his career. Hewas nominated Ducal Com- a pte: 
missary for the government of Garfagnana, country. 

a wild upland district stretching under Monte Pel- 
legrino almost across the Apennines, from the Luc- 
chese to the Modenese frontiers. Nothing but necessity 
would probably have induced Ariosto to quit Fer- 
rara for the intolerable seclusion of those bar- 


254 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE, 


barous mountains, where it was his duty to issue 
edicts against brigands, to see that the hangman 
did his duty, and to sit in judgment daily upon 
suits that proved the savage immorality of the en- 
tire population. The hopelessness of the task might 
have been enough to break a sterner heart than Ariosto’s, 
and his loathing of his life at Castelnovo found vent in 
the most powerful of his satires. He managed to en- 
dure this uncongenial existence for three years, from 
February 20, 1522, till June, 1525, sustaining his spirits 
with correspondence and composition, and varying the 
monotony of his life by visits to Ferrara. It was during 
this time, probably, that he composed the Czmgue Cente. 

The last eight years of his life were spent in great 
Hisreturn tranquillity at Ferrara. About this time he 
Leg pode: married the lady to whom for many years 
anddeath. he had been tenderly attached. She was 
the Florentine Alessandra Benucci, widow of Tito 
Strozzi, whom he first saw at Florence in the 
year 1513. The marriage was kept strictly secret, 
probably because the poet did not choose to re- 
linquish the income he derived from certain minor ben- 
efices. Nor did it prove fruitful of offspring, for he 
left no legitimate heirs. Between the year 1525, when 
he left Garfagnana, and 1532, when his poem issued 
from the press, he devoted himself with unceasing 
labor to its revision and improvement. The edition 
of 1516 consisted of forty cantos. That of 1532 con- 
tained forty-six, and the whole text had been subjected 
in the interval to minute alterations. Not long after 
the publication of the revised edition Ariosto’s health 
gave way. His constitution had never been robust, 
for he suffered continually from a catarrh of the lungs, 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 255 


which made his old life with Ippolito d’Este not only 
distasteful, but dangerous. Towards the close of 
1532 this complaint took the form of consumption, 
which ended his days on June 6, 1533. 

Next to the Orlando Furioso Ariosto’s Satires have 
the highest value for the light they cast 
upon his temperament and mode of feel- 
ing. Though they are commonly called Satires, they 
rather deserve the name of Epistles ; for while a satiric 
element gives a distinct flavor to each of the seven 
poems, this is subordinated to personal and familiar 
topics of correspondence. The poet of the Ovlando 
was not great in lyric verse. His minor compositions 
show his mastery of simple and perspicuous style ; but 
the specific qualities of his best work, its color and 
imagery and pointed humor, are absent. 

Of Boccaccio’s legacy the most considerable portion, 
and the one that bore the richest fruit, was 
the Decameron. During the sixteenth cen- 
tury the JVovel/a, as he shaped it, continued to be a 
popular and widely-practised form of literature. In 
Italy the keynote of the Renaissance was struck by 
the JVovei/a, as in England by the drama. Nor is this 
predominance of what must be reckoned a subordinate 
branch of fiction altogether singular ; for the /Vovella 
was in a special sense adapted to the taste of a public, 
which, during the time of the despots, grew up in 
Italy. Since the fourteenth century the conditions of 
social life had undergone a thorough revolution. 
Under the influence of dynastic rulers stationed in 
great cities, merchants and manufacturers rose to the 
level of the old nobility ; and in commonwealths like 
Florence the dourgeoisie gave their tone to society. 


His satires, 


The Novella. 


256 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


At the same time the community thus formed was 
separated from the people by the bar of humanistic 
culture. Literature felt the social transformation. 
Its products were shaped to suit the tastes of the 
middle classes, and at the same time to amuse the 
leisure of the aristocracy. The JVovella was the 
natural outcome of these circumstances. Its qualities 
and its defects alike betray the ascendency of the 
bourgeois element. 

The term /Vovella requires definition, lest the thing 
The char- 12 question should be confounded with our 
acterofthe modern novel. Although they bear the 
Novella. same name, these species have less in com- 
mon than might be supposed. Both, indeed, are 
narratives; but while the novel is a history ex- 
tending over a considerable space of time, embrac- 
ing a complicated tissue of events, and necessitating a 
study of character, the /Vovella is invariably brief and 
sketchy. It does not aim at presenting a detailed 
picture of human life within certain artistically chosen 
limitations, but confines itself to a striking situation, 
or tells an anecdote illustrative of some moral quality. 
This is shown by the headings of the sections into 
which Italian JVove/Hieri divided their collections. We 
read such rubrics as the following: “On the magna: 
nimity of princes,” “Concerning those who have been 
fortunate in love,” “ Of sudden changes from prosper- 
ity to evil fortune,” “ The guiles of women practised on 
their husbands.” A theme is proposed, and the 
LNVovelle are intended to exemplify it. 

Furthermore, the JVovelle were composed for the 
They were amusement of mixed companies, who met 


adapted to ae , m 
Facitation. together and passed their time in conversa 


Mi 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 257 


tion. All the Vovel/ierd pretend that their stories were 
originally recited and then written down; nor is 
there the least doubt that in a large majority of cases 
they were really read aloud or improvised upon oc- 
casions similar to those invented by their authors, 
These circumstances determined the length and ruled 
the mechanism of the Novella. It was impossible, 
within the short space of a spoken tale, to attempt 
any minute analysis of character, or to weave the 
meshes of a complicated plot. The narrator went 
straight to his object, which was to arrest.the attention, 
stimulate the curiosity, gratify the sensual instincts, 
excite the laughter, or stir the tender emotions of his 
audience by some fantastic, voluptuous, comic, or 
pathetic incident. 

Matteo Bandello’s life was itself a Movella. The 
scion of a noble house, early dedicated to the 
Order of S. Dominic, but with the general of 
that order for his uncle, he enjoyed rare opportunities of 
studying men and women in all parts of Europe. His 
good abilities and active mind enabled him to master 
the essentials of scholarship, and introduced him when 
at Mantua, where a considerable portion of his man- 
hood was passed, as tutor to Lucrezia Gonzaga, one of 
the most fascinating and learned women of his age. 
These privileges he put to use by carrying on a courtly 
flirtation with his interesting pupil, at the same time 
that he penned his celebrated novels. Misfortunes 
overtook him in 1525, when French and Spaniards con- 
tested the Duchy of Milan; but after numerous adven- 
tures he found protection at the court of France. In 
1550 Henry II. conferred upon him the See of Agen, 
where he died about ten years afterwards, when Europe 


17 


Bandello. 


258 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE, 


was ringing with the scandal of his too licentious tales. 
These tales furnished the reformers with a weapon in 
their war against the Church; nor would it have been 
easy to devise one better suited to their purpose. Even 
now it moves astonishment to think that a monk should 
‘have written, and a bishop should have published, the 
Jacetie with which Bandello’s books are filled. 

The author of Ze Cene presents a marked contrast 
to Bandello. Antonfrancesco Grazzini be- 
longed to an ancient and honorable family of 
Staggiain Valdelsa. Born at Florence in 1503, he was 
matriculated into the Sfeztai, and followed the profes- 
sion of a druggist. The sobriquet I] Lasca, or the Roach, 
assumed by him as a member of the Umidi, is the 
name by which he is best known. Besides /Vovelle, 
he wrote comedies and poems, and made the renowned 
collection of Cantz Carnascialeschi. He died in 1583 
and was buried in S. Pier Maggiore. Thus, while 
Bandello might claim to be a citizen of the great 
world, reared in the ecclesiastical purple, and convers- 
ant with the noblest society of Northern Italy, Il Lasca 
began life and ended it as a Florentine burgher. His 
stories are written in the raciest Tuscan idiom, and 
are redolent of the humor peculiar to Florence. If 
Bandello appropriated the romantic element in Boccac- 
cio, I] Lasca chose his comic side for imitation. Nearly 
all his novels turn on Jefe and durle, similar to those 
sketched in Sacchetti’s anecdotes, or developed with 
greater detail by Pulci and the anonymous author of /? 
Grasso and Legnaiuolo, Still the specific note of Il 
Lasca’s novels is not pure fun. He combines obscenity 
with fierce carnal cruelty and inhuman jesting, in a 
mixture that speaks but ill for the taste of the time. 


Grazzini. 


LHE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 259 


Agnolo Firenzuola and Antonfrancesco Doni may be 
mentioned among the more graceful of the Firenzuola 
Tuscan novelists; and it will suffice to 224 Doni. 
allude briefly to three collections which in their 
day were highly popular. These are J Proverbi 
of Antonio Cornazano, La Piacevoli Nott: 
of Straparola, and Giraldi’s Hecatommithi. 
Cornazano was a copious writer both in Latin and 
Italian. He passed his life at the courts of Francesco 
Sforza, Bartolommeo Colleoni, and Ercole I. of Ferrara. 
One of his earliest compositions was a Life of Christ. 
This fact is not insignificant, as a sign of the conditions 
under which literature was produced in the Renaissance. 
A man who had gained reputation bya learned or re- 
ligious treatise ventured to extend it by jests of 
the broadest humor. The /roverdi, by which alone 
Cornazano’s name is now distinguished, are sixteen 
carefully wrought stories, very droll but very dirty. 
Each illustrates a common proverb, and pretends to 
relate the circumstances which gave it currency. The 
author opens one tale witha simple statement: ‘ From 
the deserts of the Thebaid came to us that trite and 
much-used saying, Better late than never, and this was 
how it happened.” Having stated the theme, he enters 
on his narrative, diverting attention by a series of 
absurdities which lead to an unexpected climax. He 
concludes it thus: ‘The Abbot answered: ‘It is 
not this that makes me weep, but to think of my mis- 
fortune to have been so long without discovering and 
commending so excellent a usage.’ ‘Father,’ said 
the monk, ‘ Better late than never.” There is consider- 
able comic vigor in the working of this motive. One 
sense of the ridiculous is stimulated by a studied dis: 


Cornazano. 


260 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE, 


proportion between the universality of the proverb and 
the strangeness of the incidents invented to account for it. 

Straparola breaks ground in a different direction. 
The majority of his novels bear traces of 
their origin in fairy stories. Much interest 
attaches to the Piacevoli Notti, as the literary reproduc- 
tion of a popular species which the Venetian Gozzi 
afterwards rendered famous. The element of bizarre 
fancy is remarkable in all these tales; but the marvel- 
lous has been so mingled with the facts of common life 
as to give each narrative the true air of the conventional 
Novella, 

On the score of style alone it would be difficult to 
Giraldi explain the widespread popularity of Giraldi 
Cinthio, Cinthio’s one hundred and ten tales. The 
Hecatommithi are written in a lumbering manner, and 
the stories are often lifeless. Compared with the bril- 
liancy of the Tuscan /Vovel/e, the point and sparkle of 
Le Cene, the grace and gusto of Sermini, or Firenzuola’s 
golden fluency, the diction of this noble Ferrarese is 
dull. Yet the Hecatommithi was reprinted again and 
again, and translated into several languages. In 
England, through Painter’s Palace of Fleasure, they 
obtained wide circulation, and supplied our best dram- 
atists, including Shakespeare and Fletcher, with hints 
for plays. If we put the point of style aside, the vogue 
of Cinthio in Italy and Europe becomes at once intel- 
ligible. There is a massive force and volume in his 
matter which proclaims him an author to be reckoned 
with. The variety of scenes he represents, the tragic 
gravity of many of his motives, his intimate acquaint- 
ance with the manners and customs of a class that 
never fails to interest the vulgar, combined with great 


Straparola. 


ILHE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 261 


Sagacity in selecting and multiplying instances of strik- 
ing crime, stood him in the stead of finer art with the 
special public for whom /Vovel/e were composed. Com- 
pared even with Boccaccio, the prince of story-tellers, 
Cinthio holds his own, not as a great dramatic or descrip- 
tive writer, but as one who has studied, analyzed, and 
digested the material of human action and passion in 
a vast variety of modes. His work is more solid and 
reflective than Bandello’s; more moralized than II 
Lasca’s. The ethical tendency, both of the tales and 
the discussions they occasion, is for the most part sin- 
gularly wholesome. 

Contemporaneously with the romantic epic, the drama 
began to be a work of studied art in Italy. 
: ‘ ; ae The Drama, 

Boiardo, by his Ztmone,and Poliziano, by 
his Orfeo, gave the earliest specimens at Ferrara and 
Mantua of secular plays written in the vulgar tongue. 
It is significant that the two poets who were mainly 
instrumental in effecting a revival of Italian poetry 
should have tried their hands at two species of compo- 
sition for the stage. In the Orfeo we find a direct 
outgrowth from the Sacre Rappresentaziont, ‘The form 
of the Florentine religious shows is adapted with very 
little alteration to a pagan story. In substance the 
Orfeo is a pastoral melodrama with a tragic climax. 
Boiardo, in the Zimone, followed a different course. 
The subject is borrowed from Lucian, who speaks the 
prologue, as Gower prologizes in the Pericles of Shake- 
speare. Thecomedy aims at regularity of structure and 
is written in ferza rima. 

The first regular Italian tragedy was the Sofonisba of 
Gian Giorgio Trissino, finished in 1515, and 


six times printed before the date of its first be od 


262 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


representation at Vicenza in 1562. Trissino was a man of 
immense erudition and laborious intellect, who devoted 
himself to questions of grammatical and literary accu- 
racy, studying the critics of antiquity with indefatigable 
diligence, and seeking to establish canons for the regula- 
tion of correct Italian composition. He was by no means 
deficient in originality of aim, and professed himself 
the pioneer of novelties in poetry. Thus, besides 
innovating in the minor matter of orthography, he set 
himself to supply the deficiencies of Italian literature 
by producing an epic in the heroic style, and a tragedy 
that should compare with those of Athens. The /tadia 
Liberata and the Sofonisba, meritorious but lifeless 
exercises which lacked nothing but the genius for 
poetry, were the result of these ambitious theories. 
Without mentioning the essays of other writers, it may 
be said that the failure of Italian tragedy was insepa- 
rable from its artificial origin. It was the conscious pro- 
duct of cultivated persons who aimed at nothing nobler 
than the imitation of the ancients and the observ- 
ance of inapplicable rules. 

Numerous scholars entered the lists in competition 
with Trissino. Giovanni Rucellai produced 
his Rosmunda almost contemporaneously 
with the Sofonisha, and it was acted before Leo X. 
in the Rucellai gardens upon the occasion of a papal 
visit to Florence. The chief merit of Rosmunda is 
brevity. But it has the fatal fault of being a story 
told in scenes and dialogues—not an action moving 
and expanding through a series of connected inci- 
dents. His defects culminate in Speron 
Sperone’s Canace. The tale is horrible, 
and ‘the situations show how little of dramatic 


Rucellai. 


Sperone. 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 263 


genius Sperone brought to bear upon the hideous 
theme he had selected. 

The humanistic influences of the fifteenth century 
were scarcely less unpropitious to national : 

: Their come- 
comedy at its outset than they had been gies were 
to tragedy. We may note this fact with originally 
regret, since it helped to deprive the Ital- hater ae 
ians of a national theatre. We find that, at the close 
of that century, it was common to recite the plays of 
Plautus and Terence in their original language, though 
later on they were translated into Italian for the amuse- 
ment of an audience unacquainted with ancient lan- 
guages. The transition from Latin to Italian comedy 
was effected almost simultaneously by Ber- 
nardo Dovizio, Ariosto, and Machiavelli. 
With regard to Dovizio, who was born at Bibbiena in 
1470, it is enough to say that his Co/andra, which raised 
him to a foremost place among the literary men of Italy, 
was composed before his elevation to the dignity of 
cardinal, and was first performed at Urbino, possibly 
in 1508. From Urbino the comedy passed through all 
the courts of Italy, finding the highest favor at Rome, 
where Leo more than once decreed its representation. 

Leo had an insatiable appetite for scenic shows. 
Comedies of the new Latinizing style were Leo's 
his favorite recreation. Buthe also invited Patronage 
the Sienese company of the Rozzi, who drama. 
only played farces, every year to Rome; nor was he 
averse to even less artistic buffoonery, as may be 
gathered from many of the stories told about him. In 
1513 Leo opened a theatre upon the Capitol, and here 
in 1519, surrounded with two thousand spectators, he 
witnessed an exhibition of Ariosto’s Sxppositi, We 


Dovizio. 


264 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


have a description of the scene from the pen of an eye- 
witness, who relates how the Pope sat at the entrance 
to the gallery leading into the theatre, and admitted 
with his benediction those whom he thought worthy of 
partaking in the night’s amusement. When the house 
was full, he took his throne in the orchestra, and sat, 
with eye-glass in hand, to watch the play. Raphael 
had painted the scenery, which is said to have been, 
and doubtless was, extremely beautiful. Leo’s behav- 
ior scandalized the foreign ambassadors, who thought 
it indecorous that a Pope should not only listen to the 
equivocal jests of the prologue, but also laugh immod- 
erately at them. As usual, the inter-acts consisted of 
vocal and instrumental concerts, with ballets on classical 
and allegorical subjects. 

The mention of Leo’s entertainment in 1519 intro- 
Ariosto’s duces the subject of Ariosto’s plays. The 
plays. Suppositi, originally written in prose and 
afterwards versified by its author, first appeared in 1509 
at Ferrara. In the preceding year he exhibited the 
Cassario, which, like the Supposztz, was planned in prose 
and subsequently versified in sdrucciolo iambics. Not 
to mention others, it may be remarked that the artistic 
merit of Ariosto’s comedies is the perfection of their 
structure. However involved the intrigues may be, we 
experience no difficulty in following them, so masterly 
is their development. The characters are drawn with 
that ripe insight into human nature which distinguished 
Ariosto. The Zena has the highest value as a picture 
of Ferrarese society. We have good reason to believe 
that it was founded on an actual incident. It deserves 
to rank with Machiavelli’s Mandragola and Aretino’s 
Cortigiana for the light it throws on sixteenth-century 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 264 


customs. And the light is far more natural, less lurid, less, 
partial, than that which either Machiavelli or Aretino 
shed upon the vices of their century. 

Of Machiavelli we have two genuine comedies in 
prose, the Mandragola and the Ciizia, and Machia- 
two of doubtful authenticity, called respec- velli’s 
tively Commedia in Prosa and Commedia in eomedies. 
Versi, besides a translation of the Andria. In the 
comedy of Mandragola Machiavelli puts forth all his 
strength. Sinister and repulsive as it may be to 
modern tastes, its power is indubitable. More than 
any plays of which mention has been made, more even 
than Ariosto’s Lena and /Vegromante, it detaches itself 
from Latin precedents, and offers an unsophisticated 
view of Florentine life from its author’s terrible point 
of contemplation. 

Something more must be said of Pietro Aretino than 
that he completed the disengagement of 
Italian from Latin comedy. He was re- aera 

acter of 
markable in more ways than as merely dis- Pietro 
tinguished in Italian literature. Base in TH” 
character, coarse in mental fibre, unworthy to rank 
among real artists, notwithstanding his undoubted 
genius, Pietro Aretino was the typical ruffian of an age 
which brought ruffianism to perfection, welcomed it 
when successful, bowed to its insolence, and viewed it 
with complacent toleration in the highest places of 
Church, State, and letters. He was the condottiere of 
the pen in a society which truckled to the Borgias. He 
incarnated the dissolution of Italian culture. It is the 
condemnation of Italy that we are forced to give this 
prominence to Aretino. If we place Poliziano or 
Guicciardini, Bembo or La Casa, Bandello or Firen 


266 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


zuola, Cellini or Berni, Paolo Giovio or Lodovico Dolce 
—typical men of letters chosen from the poets, 
journalists, historians, artists, novel-writers—under the 
critical microscope, we find in each and all of them a 
tincture of Pietro Aretino. Itis because he emphasizes 
and brings into relief one master element of the Re- 
naissance. 

As an author it was no vain boast that he trusted 
His merit ag ONly to nature and mother-wit. His intel- 
anauthor. lectual distinction consisted precisely in 
this confidence and self-reliance, at a moment when 
the literary world was given over to pedantic scru- 
ples and the formalities of academical prescription. 
Writing without the fear of pedagogues before his 
eyes—seeking, as he says, relief, expression, force, 
and brilliancy of phrase, he produced a manner at 
once singular and attractive, which turned to ridicule 
the pretensions of the purists. He had the courage of 
his personality, and stamped upon his style the very 
form and pressure of himself. The originality of his 
Ars Poetica took the world by surprise. His Italian 
audience delighted in the sparkle of a style that gave 
point to their common speech. Had Aretino been a 
writer of genius Italy might now have owed to his 
audacity and self-reliance the starting-point of national 
dramatic art. He was on the right path, but he lacked 
the skill to tread it. His comedies, loosely put 
together, with no constructive vigor in their plots and 
no grasp of psychology in their characters, are a series 
of powerfully-written scenes, piquant dialogues, and 
effective situations rather than comedies in the higher 
sense of the word. 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 267 


It would be difficult to render an account of the 
comedies produced by the Italians in the m, 
sixteenth century, or to catalogue their fecundity 
authors. A computation has been made Put un | 

E originality 
which reckons the plays known to students of the play- 
at several thousands. In spite of this Wghts. 
extraordinary richness in comic literature, Italy can- 
not boast of a great comedy. No poet arose to carry 
the art onward from the point already reached when 
Aretino left the stage. The neglect that fell on those 
innumerable comedies was not wholly undeserved. It 
is true that their scenes suggested brilliant episodes to 
French and English playwrights of celebrity. It is 
true that the historian of manners finds in them an 
almost inexhaustible store of matter. Still they are 
literary lucubrations rather than the spontaneous 
expression of a vivid nationality. Nor have they the 
subordinate merit of dealing in a scientific spirit with 
the cardinal vices and follies of society. We miss the 
original plots, the powerful modelling of character, the 
philosophical insight, which would have reconciled us 
to a Commedia crudtta. 

The transition from the middle ages to the Renais- 
sance was marked by a new ideal, which ay, revoy. 
we have now to notice, as it in no slight sion from 
measure affected Italian literature. The te a 
faiths and aspirations of Catholicism, new ideal of 
whereof the Divine Comedy remains the life 
monument in art, began to lose their hold on the 
imagination. The world beyond the grave grew dim 
to mental vision, in proportion as this world, through 
humanism rediscovered, claimed daily more attention. 
Neither the expectation of heavenly bliss nor the fear 


268 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


of purgatorial pain was felt with that intense sincerity 
which inspired Dante’s cantos and Orcagna’s frescoes. 
On both emotions the new culture, appearing at one 
moment as a solvent through philosophical speculation, 
at another as a corrosive in the sceptical and critical 
activity it stimulated, was acting with destructive 
energy. Thus it happened that the sensibilities of 
men athirst for some consoling fancy took refuge in the 
dream of a past happy age. On one side the ideal 
was purely literary, reflecting the artistic instincts of a 
people enthusiastic for form, and affording scope for 
their imitative activity; but, on the other side, it cor- 
responded to a deep and genuine Italian feeling. 
That sympathy with rustic life, that love of nature 
humanized by industry, that delight in the villa, the 
garden, the vineyard and the grove, which modern 
Italians inherited from their Roman ancestors, gave 
reality to what might otherwise have been but artificial. 
Vespasiano’s anecdotes of Cosimo de’ Medici pruning 
his own fruit-trees ; Ficino’s description of the village 
feasts at Montevecchio; Flamminio’s picture of his 
Latin farm; Alberti’s tenderness in gazing at the 
autumn fields—all these have the ring of genuine 
emotion. For men who felt like this, the Age of 
Gold was no mere fiction and Arcady a land of possi- 
bilities. 

What has been well called Ja voluttd idillica—the 
sensuous sensibility to beauty, finding fit ex- 
pression in the idyll—formed a marked char- 
acteristic of Renaissance art and literature. Boccaccio 
developed this idyllic motive in all his works which dealt 
with the origins of society. Poliziano and Lorenzo de- 
voted their best poetry to the praise of rural bliss, the 


The Idyll. 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 269 


happiness of shepherd folk anterior to life in cities. The 
same theme recurs in the Latin poems of the humanists. 
It pervades the clergy, the ode, the sonnet, and takes to 
itself the chief honors of the drama, A literary Eldo- 
rado had been discovered which was destined to attract 
explorers through the next three centuries. Arcadia 
became the wonder-world of noble youths and maidens, 
at Madrid no less than at Ferrara, in Elizabeth’s London 
and in Marie Antoinette’s Versailles. After engaging 
the genius of Tasso and Guarini, Spenser and Sidney, 
it degenerated into quaint conventionality. Companions 
of Turenne and Marlborough told tales of pastoral love 
to maids of honor near the throne. Frederick’s and 
Maria Theresa’s courtiers simpered and sighed like 
Dresden-china swains and shepherdesses. Crooked 
sticks with ribbons at the top were a fashionable appen- 
dage to red-heeled shoes and powdered perukes. Few 
phenomena in history are more curious than the pro- 
longed prosperity and widespread fascination of this 
Arcadian romance. 

To Jacopo Sannazzaro belongs the glory of having 
first explored Arcadia, mapped out its 
borders, and called it after his own name. 
He is the Columbus of this visionary hemisphere. | His 
ancestors claim to have been originally Spaniards, 
settled in a village of Pavia called S. Nazzaro, whence 
they took theirname. The poet’s immediate forefather 
was said to have followed Charles of Durezzo in 1380 
to the south of Italy, where he received fiefs and lands 
in the Basilicata. Jacopo was born at Naples in 1458, 
and, as a youth, made such rapid progress in both 
Greek and Latin scholarship as soon to be found worthy 
of admission to Pontano’s academy. The friendship be- 


Sannazzaro. 


270 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 


tween the master and pupil lasted without interruption 
up to the time of the death of the former in 1503. 
Their Latin poems abound in passages which testify to 
a strong mutual regard, and the life-size effigies of both 
may still be seen together in the church of Monte 
Oliveto at Naples. Distinction in scholarship was, 
after the days of Alfonso the Magnanimous, a sure title 
to consideration at the Neapolitan court. Sannazzaro 
attached himself to the person of Frederick, the second 
son of Ferdinand I ; and when this prince succeeded 
to the throne he conferred upon the poet a pension and 
the pleasant villa of Mergoglino between the city and 
Posilippo. When Frederick was forced to retire to 
France in 1501, Sannazzaro accompanied his royal 
master into exile, only returning to Naples after the ex- 
king’s death. There Sannazzaro continued to reside 
until his own death in 1530, after seeing the destruction 
of his villa during the occupation of Naples by the 
Imperial troops under the Prince of Orange. The 
Arcadia was begun at Nocera in his youth, continued 
during his residence in France, and finished on his re- 
turn to Naples. The book blends autobiography and 
fable in a narrative of very languid interest. Loose in 
construction and uncertain in aim, it lacks the clearness 
and consistency of perfect art. And yet it is a master- 
piece ; because its author, led by present instinct, con 
trived to make it reflect one of the deepest and most 
permanent emotions of his time. The whole pastoral 
ideal—the yearning after a golden age, the beauty and 
pathos of the country, the felicity of simple folk, the 
details of rustic life, the charm of woods and gardens, 
the mythology of Pan and Satyrs, of nymphs and fauns 
—all this is expressed in a series of pictures idyllically 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 271 


graceful and artistically felt. For English students the 
Arcadia has a special interest, since it begot the longer 
and more ambitious work of Sir Philip Sidney. 

In Pontano, again, the southern people found a voice 
which, though it uttered a dead language— 
for his most important contributions to Ital- 
ian literature were in Latin—expressed all their senti- 
ments. Though a native of Coneto in Umbria, Pontano 
passed his life at Naples,and became, if we may trust the 
evidence of his lyrics, more Neapolitan than the Neapol- 
itans. Thecardinal point in Pontano is the breadth of 
his feeling. Hetouches the whole scale of natural emo- 
tions with equal passion and sincerity. The love of the 
young man for his sweetheart, the love of the husband for 
his bride, the love of a father for his offspring, the love of 
a nurse for her infant charge, find in his verse the same 
full sensuous expression. His poems may be read with 
no less profit for their pictures of Neapolitan life. He 
brings the Baths of Baiz, unspoiled as yet by the 
eruption of Monte Nuovo, vividly before us; the myrtle- 
groves and gardens by the bay; the sailors stretched 
along the shore ; the youths and maidens flirting as 
they bathe or drink the waters, their evening walks, 
their little dinners, their assignations—all the round of 
pleasure in a place and climate made for love. Or we 
watch the people at their games, crowded together on 
those high-built carts, rattling the tambourine and 
spurring the dancers of the tarantella—as near to fauns 
and nymphs as humanity may well be. 

It is impossible in a limited space to render any 
adequate account of the bucolic idylls, and 
we can well afford to turn in silence from 
the common crowd of eclogue writers. Yet oneemerges 


Pontano. 


Molza. 


272 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE, 


from the rank and file who deserves particular atten- 
tion. Born at Modena in 1489, Francesco Maria Molza 
stands foremost in his own day among scholars of ripe 
erudition and artists of accomplished skill. His high 
birth, his genial conversation, his loves and self-inflicted 
misfortunes, alike brought him distinction, while his 
Ninfa Tiburina is still the sweetest pastoral of the golden 
age. Yet the brilliance of his literary fame, and the 
affection felt for him by men of note in every part of 
Italy, will not distract attention from the ignobility of 
his career. Faithless to his wife, neglectful of his 
children, continually begging money from his father, he 
passed his manhood in a series of amours. The poem 
we have mentioned was composed in honor of a Roman 
courtesan, so famous for her beauty and fine breeding 
as to attract the sympathy of even austere natures. 
When she died, the town went into mourning and the 
streets echoed with elegiac lamentations, It is curious 
that among Michael Angelo’s sonnets should be found 
one—not, however, of the best—written upon this occa- 
sion. Between 1523 and 1525, he passed two years in 
the society of a more illustrious companion—the beau- 
tiful and witty Camilla Gonzaga. After again return- 
ing to Rome he shared in the miseries of the sack, 
which made so doleful an impression on his mind that, 
saddened for the time, he returned like the prodigal to 
his home in Mantua. Rome, however, although not 
destined to regain the splendor she had lost, shook off 
the dust and blood of 1527; and there were competent 
observers who, like Aretino, thought her still more reck- 
less in vice than she had been before. Molza could 
not long resist these attractions. We find him there 
again in 1529, attached to the person of Cardinal 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 273 


Ippolito de’ Medici, and delighting the academies with 
his wit. Two years afterwards his father and mother 
died on successive days of August, and he celebrated 
their deaths in one of the most lovely of his many son- 
nets. But his ill life, and obstinate refusal to settle at 
Modena, had disinherited him, and henceforth he 
lived upon his son Camillo’s bounty. At last, after 
suffering for some years from a malady brought on by 
his dissolute course of life, he crawled back to Modena, 
where he died in February, 1544, offering to the world, 
as his biographer is careful to assure us, a rare example 
of Christian resignation and devotion. All the men of 
the Renaissance died in the odor of piety. 

We have now briefly traced the pastoral ideal from 
its commencement in Boccaccio, through The cul- 
the Arcadia of Sannazzaro and the Orfeo of Mination 

spo 2 of pastoral 

Poliziano, up to the point when it was drama. 
destined soon to find its perfect form in the Aminta 
and the Pastor Fido. Both Tasso and Guarini lived 
beyond the chronological limits of our survey. Yet 
we must give a passing notice to two poems which 
combined the drama and the pastoral idyll in works of 
art no less characteristic of the time than fruitful of 
results for European literature. 

Torquato Tasso, born at Sorrento in 1544, became, 
at the age of eighteen, more famousthan Tasso. 
his father, Bernardo, who, amid journeys, campaigns, 
and miscellaneous court duties, had produced sonnets, 
odes and epithalamial hymns which placed him among 
the foremost lyrists of his time. Torquato, like so 
many youths of good family, as we have seen, was 
educated for the legal profession. He was soon, how- 


ever, in the luxurious court of Ferrara, at which we find 
18 


274 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE, 


him, in 1565, in the suite of Cardinal Louis d’Este, able 
to follow the bent of his genius. With regard to his 
play of Amzinta, it would be a mistake to suppose that, 
because the form of the Arcadian romance was artifi- 
cial, it could not lend itself to the presentation of real 
passion when adapted to the theatre. Though Battista 
Guarini. Guarini’s Pastor Fido is the more carefully 
constructed plot of the two, they both present a series 
of emotional situations, developed with refined art and 
expressed with lyrical abundance. The rustic fable is 
but a veil through which the everlasting lineaments of 
love are shown. Of the music and beauty of these two 
dramas it is difficult to speak. Before some master- 
pieces criticism bends in silence. We cannot describe 
what must be felt. All the melodies that had been 
growing through two centuries in Italy are concentrated 
in their songs. The idyllic voluptuousness which per- 
meated literature and art steeps their pictures in a golden 
glow. They complete and close the Renaissance, 
bequeathing in a new species of art its form and press- 
ure to succeeding generations. 
We have now seen that the awakened consciousness 
of the Italic people showed itself first in the 
The classic ‘ » area 
pendet creation of a learned literature, imitating as 
thought to closely as possible in a dead language the 
bo essential. Fodels recovered from ancient Rome. It 
was not enough to appropriate the matter of the Latin 
authors. Their form had to be assimilated and 
reproduced. These pioneers in scholarship believed 
that the vulgar tongue, with its divergent dialects, 
had ever been and still remained incapable of higher 
culture. The refined diction of Cicero and Virgil was 
for them a separate and superior speech, consecrated 


Ama he id 


THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 275 


by infallible precedent, and no less serviceable for 
modern than it had been formerly for antique usage. 
Recovering the style of the Augustan age, they thought 
they would possess an instrument of utterance adapted 
to their present needs and correlated to the living lan- 
guage of the people, as it had been in the ageof Roman 
greatness. 

With the cessation of the first enthusiasm for antique 
culture, the claims of vernacular Italian tig ais- 
came to be recognized, No other modern Sepkaeheo 
nation had produced masterpieces equal form. 
to those of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. The self- 
esteem of the Italians could not suffer the exclusion of 
the Divine Comedy, the Canzoniere, and the Decameron 
from the rank of classics. Men of delicate perception, 
like Alberti and Lorenzo de’ Medici, felt that the 
honors of posterity would fall to the share of those 
who cultivated and improved their mother tongue. 
Thus the earlier position of the humanists was recog- 
nized as false. Could not their recent acquisitions be 
carried over to the account and profit of the vernacular ? 
A common Italian language, based upon the Tuscan, 
but modified for general usage, was now practised in 
accordance with the rules and objects of the scholars. 
It was thus that the masterpieces of cingue cento 
literature came into being—the Orv/ando and the 
comedies of Ariosto, Machiavelli’s histories and San- 
nazzaro’s Arcadia, the Gerusalemme of ‘Tasso and 
Guarini’s Pastor /ido—together with the multitudinous 
and multifarious work of lesser craftsmen in prose 
and verse. 


XIV. 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


HE Papacy, after the ending of the schism and 
the settlement of Nicholas V. at Rome in 1547, 
gradually tended to become an Italian sovereignty. 
During the residence of the Popes at Avignon, and the 
weakness of the Papal See which followed in the period 
of the Councils (Pisa, Constance, and Basle), it had 
lost its hold, not only on the immediate neighbor- 
hood of Rome, but also on its outlying possessions 
in Umbria, the Marches of Ancona, and the Exarchate 
of Ravenna. The great houses of Colonna and Orsini 
asserted independence in their principalities. Bologna 
and Perugia pretended to republican governments 
under the shadow of noble families, and all the other 
great cities obeyed the rule of tyrants who were practi- 
cally their lords, though they bore the title of Papal 


Vicars. It became the chief object of the Popes, after. 


they were freed from the pressing peril of general 
councils, and were once more settled in their capital 
and recognized as sovereigns by the European Powers, 
to subdue their vassals and consolidate their provinces 
into a homogeneous kingdom. 

This plan was conceived and carried out by a suc- 


The am- cession of vigorous and unscrupulous 
policy of the Pontiffs—Sixtus IV., Alexander VI., Julius 
apacy. II., and Leo X.—throughout the period of 


distracting foreign wars which agitated Italy. They 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 277 


followed, for the most part, one line of policy, 
which was to place the wealth and authority of 
the Holy See at the disposal of their relations, Riarios 
Della Roveres, Borgias, and Medici. Their military 
delegates, among whom the most efficient captain was 
the terrible Cesare Borgia, had full power to crush the 
liberties of cities, exterminate the dynasties of despots, 
and reduce refractory districts to the Papal sway. For 
these services they were rewarded with ducal and 
princely titles, with the administration of their con- 
quests, and with the investiture of fiefs as vassals of 
the Church. The profits, however, of all these schemes 
of egotistical rapacity accrued, not to the relatives of 
the Pontiffs (none of whom, except the Della Roveres 
in Urbino, founded at this period a dynasty), but to 
the Holy See. 

In the middle of the first half of the sixteenth 
century, as we have seen, Spain, France, The disorder 
and Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, of Italy is to 

: : the advan- 
made havoc of the fairest provinces and tage of 
cities of Italy. Clement VII., imprisoned Clement VI. 
in the castle of S. Angelo, forced day and night 
to gaze upon his capital in flames, and to hear 
the groans of his tortured people, emerged the 
only vigorous survivor of all the greater states of 
the peninsula. Owing to their prostration, there was 
now no resistance possible to the Pope’s secular su-. 
premacy within the limits of his authorized dominion. 
The defeat of France, and the accession of a Spanish 
monarch to the empire, guaranteed peace. Venice had 
been stunned and mutilated by the League of Cambray. 
Florence had been enslaved after the battle of 
Ravenna. Milan had been relinquished, out-worn and 


278 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


depopulated, to the nominal ascendency of an impotent 
Sforza. Naples was a province of the Spanish mon- 
archy. The feudal vassals, and the subject cities of 
the Holy See, had been ground and churned together 
by a series of revolutions, unexampled even in the 
medizval history of the Italian communes. If, there- 
fore, the Pope could come to terms with the King of 
Spain for the partition of supreme authority in the pen- 
insula, they might henceforward share the mangled 
remains of the Italian prey at peace together. 

This is precisely what they resolved on doing. The 

basis of their agreement was laid in the 
His agree- ; ; 
ment with treaty of Barcelonainis529. It was ratified 
CharlesV. and secured by the treaty of Cambray in the 
same year. By the former of these compacts Charles V. 
and Clement swore friendship. Clement promised 
_ to Charles the Imperial crown and the investiture of 
Naples. Charles agreed to reinstate the Pope in Emilia, 
which had been seized from Ferrara by Julius II.; to 
procure the restoration of Ravenna and Cervia from 
the Venetians; and to bestow the hand of his natural 
daughter, Margaret of Austria, on Clement’s bastard 
nephew, Alessandro de Medici, who was already desig- 
nated ruler of Florence. By the treaty of Cambray 
Francis I. relinquished his claims on Italy, receiving in 
exchange the possession of Burgundy. The French 
allies, who were sacrificed on this occasion by the 
most Christian to the most Catholic, monarch, con- 
sisted of the republics of Venice and Florence, the 
dukes of Milan and Ferrara, the princely houses of 
Orsini and Fregosi in Rome and Genoa, together with 
the Angevin nobles in the realm of Naples. The Paix 
des Dames, as this act of capitulation was called (since 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 279 


it had been drawn up in private conclave by Louisa of 
Savoy and Margaret of Austria, the mother and the 
aunt of the two signatories), was a virtual acknowledg- 
ment of the fact that French influence in Italy was at 
an end. 

The surrender of Italy by Francis made it necessary 
that Charles should put in order the vast qanos v. 
estates to which he now succeeded assole lands in 
master. He was, moreover, Emperor Elect, T#ly- 
and he judged this occasion good for assuming the 
two crowns according to antique custom. Conse- 
quently, in July, 1529, he caused Andrea Doria to meet 
him at Barcelona, crossed the Mediterranean in arough 
passage of fourteen days, landed at Genoa on August 
12, and proceeded by Piacenza, Parma, and Modena to 
Bologna, where Clement was already awaiting him. 
Charles had a body of two thousand Spaniards 
quartered at Genoa, as well as strong garrisons in the 
Milanese, and a force of about seven thousand troops 
collected by the Prince of Orange from the débris of the 
army which had plundered Rome. He took with him 
as escort some ten thousand men, counting horse and 
infantry. The total, therefore, of the troops which 
obeyed his command in Italy might: be computed at 
about twenty-seven thousand, including Spanish cavalry 
and foot, German landsknechts, and Italian merce- 
naries. ‘This large army, partly stationed in important 
posts of defence, partly in movement, was sufficient to 
make every word of his a law. 

To greet the king on his arrival at Genoa, Clement 
had deputed two ambassadors, the Cardinal His recep. 
Ercole Gonzaga and Monsignore Gian- tion at 
matteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona. Gonzaga 2% 


280 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


was destined to play a part of critical importance 
in the Tridentine Council. Giberti had made him- 
self illustrious in the Church, by the administration of 
his diocese on a system which anticipated the coming 
ecclesiastical reforms. Three other men of high 
distinction and of fateful future attended on their Im- 
perial master. Of these the first was Cardinal Ales. 
sandro Farnese, who succeeded Clement in the Papacy, 
opened the Council of Trent, and added a new reign- 
ing family to the Italian princes. ‘The others were the 
Pope’s nephews, Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Flor- 
ence designate, and his cousin the Cardinal Ippolito 
de’ Medici. 

Great preparations meanwhile were being made in 
Hemakes Bologna. ‘The municipality and nobles 
ce ae exerted their utmost in these bad times 
Bologna. to render the reception of the Emperor 
worthy of the lustre which his residence and coro- 


nation would confer on them. Gallant guests began 


to flock into the city. Among these may be men- 
tioned the brilliant Isabella d’Este, sister of Duke 
Alfonso and mother of the reigning Marquis of Mantua. 
On November 3 came Andrea Doria with his relative the 
Cardinal Girolamo of that name. About the same 
time Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggi, Bishop of Bologna, 
returned from his legation in England, where (the 
student of our history will remember) he had been en- 
gaged on the question of Henry VIII.’s divorce from 
Katharine of Aragon. Next day Charles arrived out- 
side the gate, and took up his quarters in the rich con- 
vent of Certosa which now forms the Campo Santo, 
He passed the night of the 4th there, and on the 
following morning made his entry, in great state, into 


the city. 


Wiig 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 281 


Clement, surrounded by a troop of prelates, was 
seated to receive him on a platform raised The meeting 
before the church of S. Petronio in the EY os 
great piazza. The king dismounted oppos- peror. 
ite the Papal throne, ascended the steps beneath 
a canopy of gold and crimson, and knelt to kiss 
the Pontiff’s feet. When their eyes first met, it was 
observed that both turned pale; for the memory of 
outraged. Rome was on the minds of both; and Cesar, 
while he paid this homage to Christ’s Vicar, had the 
load of those long months of suffering and insult on 
his conscience. Clement bent down, and with stream- 
ing eyes saluted him upon the cheek. Then, when 
Charles was still upon his knees, they exchanged a few 
‘set words referring to the purpose of their meeting, 
and their common desire for the pacification of Chris- 
tendom. After this the Emperor Elect arose, seated 
himself for a while beside the Pope, and next at his 
invitation escorted him to the great portal of the church. 
On the way he inquired after Clement’s health; to 
which the Pope replied somewhat significantly that, 
after leaving Rome, it had steadily improved. He 
tempered this allusion to his captivity, however, by 
adding that his eagerness to greet his majesty had 
inspired him with more than wonted strength and 
courage. At the doorway they parted; and the 
Emperor, having paid his devotion to the Sacrament 
and kissed the altar, was conducted to the apartment 
prepared for him in the Palazzo Pubblico. 

Charles had come to assume the iron and the golder 
crowns in Italy. He ought to have jour- Charles Vv. 
-neyed to Monza, or to S. Ambrogio at receives the 


sige _ iron Crown 
Milan, for the first, and to the Lateran in of Italy. 


282 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


Rome for the second of these investitures. An 
emperor of the Swabian house would have been 
compelled by precedent and superstition to observe 
this form. By breaking the old rules, Charles notified 
the disappearance of the medizval order, and pro- 
claimed new political ideals to the world. When asked 
whether he would not follow custom, and seek the 
Lombard crown in Monza, he brutally replied that he 
was not wont torun after crowns, but to have crowns 
running after him. He trampled no less on that still 
more venerable veligio loci which attached Imperial 
rights to Rome. Together with this ancient piety, he 
swept the Holy Roman Empire into the dust-heap of 
archaic curiosities. The citizens of Monza were bidden 
to send the iron crown to Bologna. It arrived on 
February 20, 1530, and on the 22d Charles received 
it from the hands of Clement in the chapel of the palace. 

February 24, which was the anniversary of Charles’s 
His corona- birthday, had been fixed for his coronation 
tion as as Emperor in S. Petronio. This church is 
Emperor. one of the largest Gothic buildings in Italy. 
Its facade occupies the southern side of the piazza. To 
the left of it is the Palazzo Pubblico, and in order to 
facilitate the passage of the Pope and the Emperor from 
the palace to the cathedral a bridge was constructed from 
an opening in the Hall of the Ancients to the platform 
in front of thefacade. Clement was borne aloft by 
pontifical grooms in their red liveries. He wore the 
tiara and a cope of state fastened by Cellini’s famous 
stud, in which blazed the Burgundian diamond of 
Charles the Bold. Charles walked in royal robes, at 
tended by the Count of Nassau and Don Pietro di 
Toledo, the Viceroy of Naples, who afterwards gave 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 283 


his name to the chief street in that city. Before him 
went the Marquis of Montferrat, bearing the sceptre ; 
Philip, Duke of Bavaria, carrying the golden orb; the 
Duke of Urbino with the sword, and the Duke of 
Savoy holding the Imperial diadem. ‘The day was 
well-nigh over when, after a series of ceremonies during 
which Charles was consecrated a Deacon, he at length 
received the Imperial insignia from the Pope’s hands. 
Accipe gladium sanctum, Accipe virgam, Acci~pe pomum, 
Accipe signum glorie. As Clement pronounced these 
sentences, he gave the sword, the sceptre, the globe and 
the diadem, in succession, to the Emperor who knelt 
before him. Charles bent and kissed the papal feet. 
He then rose and took his throne beside the Pope. It 
was placed two steps lower than that of Clement. The 
ceremony of coronation and enthronization being now 
complete, Charles was proclaimed: Romanorum Im- 
perator semper augustus, mundi totius Dominus, universis 
Dominis, universis Principibus et Populis semper vene- 
randus. When mass was over, Pope and Emperor shook 
hands. At the Church door Charles held Clement’s 
stirrup, and when the Pope had mounted he led his pal- 
frey for some paces in sign of filial submission. 

The few weeks which now remained before Charles 
left Bologna were spent for the most part Society at 
in jousts and tournaments, visits to Bologna. 
churches, and social entertainments. Veronica Gam- 
bara threw her apartments open to the numerous men 
of letters who crowded from all parts of Italy to witness 
the ceremony of Charles’s coronation. This lady was 
widow of the late Lord of Correggio, and one of the 
two most illustrious women of the time. She dwelt 
with princely state in the palace of the Marsigli; and 


234 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


here might be seen the poets Bembo and Molza in 
conversation with witty Berni and stately Trissina, 
There were also to be seen there Paolo Giovio and 
Francesco Guicciardini, the chief historians of their 
time, together with a host of literary and diplomatic 
worthies attached to the courts of Urbino and Ferrara, 
or attendant on the train of cardinals who, like Ippolito 
de’ Medici, made a display of culture. Meanwhile the 
Dowager Marchioness of Mantua and the Duchess of 
Savoy entertained Italian and Spanish nobles with 
masqued balls and carnival processions, in the Manzoli 
and Pepoli palaces. What still remained to Italy of 
Renaissance splendor, wit, and fashion, after the sack 
of Rome and the prostration of her noblest cities, was 
concentrated in this sunset blaze of festivity at Bologna. 
Nor were the arts without illustrious representatives. 
Francesco Mazzola, surnamed I] Parmigianino, before 
whose altar-piece in his Roman studio the rough soldiers 
of Bourbon’s army were said to have lately knelt in 
adoration, commemorated the hero of the day by paint- 
ing Charles attended by Fame who crowned his fore- 
head, while an infant Hercules handed him the globe. 
Titian, too, was there, and received the honor of 
several sittings from the Emperor. His life-sized por- 
trait of Charles in full armor, seated on a white war- 
horse, has perished; but it gave such satisfaction at 
the moment that the fortunate master was made a 
knight and count palatine, and appointed painter to the 
Emperor with a fixed pension. From this assemblage 
of eminent persons we notice the absence of Pietro Are- 
tino. He was at the moment out of favor with Clem- 
ent VII. But, independently of his obstacle, he may 
well have thought it imprudent to quit his Venetian re 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 285 


treat, and expose himself to the resentment of so many 
princes whom he had alternately loaded with false 
praises and bemired with loathsome libels. 

In the midst of this mirth-making there arrived on 
March 20 an embassy from England, an- The Pope 
nouncing Henry VIII.’s resolve to divorce ae 
himself at any cost from Katharine of Ara- separate. 
gon. This may well have recalled both Pope and Em- 
peror to a sense of the gravity of European affairs. 
The schism of England was now imminent. Germany 
was distracted by Protestant revolution. The Imperial 
army was largely composed of mutinous Lutherans. 
Some of these soldiers had even dared to overthrow a 
colossal statue of Clement VII. at Bologna. Nor were 
the gathering forces of revolutionary Protestantism 
alone ominous. Though Soliman had been repulsed 
before Vienna, the Turks were still advancing on the 
eastern borders of the empire. ‘Their fleets swept the 
Levantine waters, while the pirate dynasties of Tunis 
and Algiers threatened the whole Mediterranean coast 
with ruin. Charles, still uncertain what part he should 
take in the disputes of Germany, left Bologna for the 
Tyrol on March 23. Clement, on the last day of the 
month, took his journey by Loreto to Rome. 

Florence alone had been excepted from the articles 
of peace. When the news had arrived there, Florence 
in 1527. that Rome was in the hands of a fonétitutes 
Lutheran rabble, and that the Pope re- Republic. 
mained imprisoned in the castle of S, Angelo, the 
citizens proclaimed a Republic. The Grand Coun- 
‘cil was reformed, and the Constitution was re- 
stored on the basis of 1489; only the Gonfalenier 
was to. be re-elected at the expiration of each year. 


286 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


Nicold Caponi, a man of fervent piety and moderate 
political opinions, was the first to hold the office. The 
new State hastened to form an alliance with France, 
and Malatesta Baglioni was appointed commander-in- 
chief with the support of Stefano Colonna, These 
captains were both of them men of considerable ability. 
During the following year, after the arrival on the 
She prepares Scene of Charles V. the Florentines perceived 
forasiege. that they would have to sustainasiege, Ac- 
cordingly they began to put the city in a state for de 
fence, by first destroying the villas with their gardens in 
the immediate neighborhood of the walls. Outworks 
were thrown up; the most noticeable of these being the 
one of great strength, constructed by Michael Angelo on 
the height of S. Miniato, which, from its command of 
the town, necessitated its capture before an occupation 
could be attempted. Machiavelli, who had died dur- 
ing the first days of the new Republic, left behind him 
a scheme, as we have already noticed, for constituting 
a national militia. The male population who were fit 
to serve were immediately enrolled in accordance with 
this plan, and for a whole year the Florentines dis- 
played the greatest energy in developing the military re- 
sources at theircommand. Unluckily they stood alone, 
receiving no support either from France or the sister 
states of Italy, while the Emperor declared his intention 
of giving them up as rebellious subjects of the Pope. 
At the end of August, 1529, the Prince of Orange 
The Prince moved from Rome at the head of the Impe- 
of Orange — rial troops. Although these had been consid 
Florence. § erably reduced in number by debauchery 
and disease during the sack of Rome, they still 
amounted with reinforcements to something like 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 287 


twenty thousand men. The Prince began by securing 
the valley of the Arno, and subduing the principal 
towns of the Florentine territory. He then encamped 
on the plain of Rissoli, and concentrated his attack on 
she fortification of S. Miniato. 

The siege and defence dragged on for eight months, 
while outside the walls one hero was found Francesco 
in the person of Francesco Ferrucci. He Ferrucci. 
had learned the art of war under the brilliant and 
adventurous captain Giovanni de’ Medici of the Black 
Bands. Commissioned to serve the interest of the 
Republic in the way he thought best, Ferrucci col- 
lected all the men he could, and instituted a harassing 
system of guerilla warfare. His first noticeable success 
was the capture of Volterra; after which, having by 
this time enrolled upwards of three thousand men, he 
made a raid upon the mountains of Pistoja. But 
Ferrucci’s exploits had roused the serious alarm of the 
Imperialists. He was surrounded by an overwhelming 
force in the little village of Gavignana, and fell fighting 
in the streets, together with two thousand of his men. 
This happened on August 2. 

Within the walls there existed two elements of weak- 
ness. One was the discord which prevailed among the 
citizens. They had for along series of years been 
divided by several factions. One of them favored the 
Medici, another Savonarola, a third desired an oli- 
_garchy, a fourth demanded a strictly democratic consti- 
tution, In these circumstances it was unfortunate that 
a new Gonfalonier had to be elected every year, for the 
political disagreements of the city came into more 
unwholesome prominence on each of these occasions. 
The other element of weakness, which proved fatal, was 


288 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


the disloyalty of the general. On receiving news of the 
defeat and death of Ferrucci, Baglioni, who had never 
ceased to correspond with the enemy, began to nego- 
tiate in earnest, and on August 13 he obliged the cit- 
izens to capitulate, without obtaining sufficient guar- 
antees for the security of their persons and property. 
Consequently, the return of the Medici to power was 
followed by a series of executions, banishments, and 
confiscations in which the animosity of the Pope was 
conspicuous. Alessandro de Medici took up his resi- 
dence there in July, 1531, and held the State by the help 
of Spanish mercenaries under the command of Alessan- 
dro Vitelli. When he was murdered by a cousin in 
1537, having previously poisoned the Cardinal Ippolito 
who was with him at Bologna, Cosimo de’ Medici, the 
scion of another branch of the ruling family, was 
appointed duke. Charles V. recognized his title, and 
Cosimo soon showed his determination to be master in 
his own duchy. He crushed the exiled party of Filippo 
Strozzi, who attempted a revolution in the State, exter- 
minated its leaders, and contrived to rid himself of the 
powerful adherents who had placed him on the throne. 
But he remained a subservient, though not very willing, 
ally of Spain, and subsequently profited by this policy. 
In 1557 Philip II. conceded to him the Sienese territory 
reserving only its forts, and in 1559 Cosimo obtained 
the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany from Pope Pius V. 
This title was confirmed by the Empire to his son 
Francesco in 1575. 

Thus the republics of Florence and Siena were ex- 
Spainand tinguished. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany 
Rome profit became an Italian power of the first magni- 


by further Peis 
changes. tude, devoted to the absolute principles of 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 289 


Spanish and Papal sovereignty. The further changes 
which took place in Italy after the year 1530 
turned equally to the profit of Spain and Rome. 
These were principally the creation of the Duchy of 
Parma for the Farnese (1545-1559); the resumption 
of Ferrara by the Papacy in 1597, which reduced the 
house of Este to the smaller fiefs of Modena and 
Reggio; the acquisition of Montferrat by Mantua in 
1536; the cession of Saluzzo to Savoy in 1598, and 
the absorption of Urbino into the Papal domains in 
1631. 

The intellectual and social life of the Italians, though 
much reduced in vigor, continued, as for- myo cities 
merly, to be concentrated in cities marked still the 
by distinct local qualities, and boastful of oreealynh 
their ancient glories. The courts of Ferrara 204 att. 
and Urbino remained centres for literary and artistic 
coteries. Rome early assumed novel airs of piety, and 
external conformity to austere patterns became the 
fashion. Yet the Papal capital did not wholly cease 
to be the resort of students and of artists. The uni- 
versities maintained themselves in a respectable posi- 
tion—far different, indeed, from that which they had 
held in the last century, yet not ignoble. Much was 
being learned on many lines of study divergent from 
those prescribed by earlier humanists. Padua, in par 
ticular, distinguished itself for medical researches. 
This was the flourishing time, moreover, of academies, 
in which, notwithstanding nonsense talked and foolish 
tastes indulged, some solid work was done for literature 
and science. The names of Cimento, Della Crusca, 
and Palazzo Vernio, at Florence, remind us of not 
unimportant labors in physics, in the analysis of lan- 

19 


290 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


guage, and in the formation of a new dramatic style ot 
music. At the same time the resurgence of popular 
literature, and the creation of popular theatrical types, 
were further symptoms of an unimpaired vitality. It is 
as though the Italian nation, suffocated by Spanish 
etiquette and poisoned by Jesuitical duplicity, sought 
to expand healthy lungs in pure and  unim- 
peded air, indulging in dialectical niceties, and 
immortalizing street jokes by the genius of masqued 
comedy. 

We have to observe, however, that at this epoch 
The awak- Catholic Christianity showed signs of re- 
ening of awakening. The Reformation called forth 
Catholicism. 4 new and sincere spirit in the Latin 
Church; new antagonisms were evoked, and new 
efforts after self-preservation had to be made by the 
Papal hierarchy. At first sight we may wonder that 
the race which had shone with such incomparable 
lustre from Dante to Ariosto, and which had done so 
much to create modern culture for Europe, should so 
quietly have accepted a retrogressive revolution. Yet, 
when we look closer, this is not surprising. The Ital- 
ians were fatigued with creation, bewildered by the 
complexity of their discoveries, uncertain as to the 
immediate course before them. The Renaissance had 
been mainly the work of a select few. It had trans- 
formed society without permeating the masses of the 
people. Was it strange that the majority should reflect 
that, after all, the old ways are the best? Thisled them 
to approve the Catholic revival. Was it strange that, 
after long, distracting, aimless wars, they should hail 
peace at any price? This lent popular sanction to 
the Spanish hegemony, in spite of its obvious draw: 


backs, } y 


LHE CATHOLIC REACTION. 291 


It must not be supposed that the change we have 
indicated passed rapidly over the Italian hore were 
spirit. When Paul ITI. succeeded Clement still some 
on the Papal throne in 1534, some of the ad eeehes 
giants of the Renaissance still survived, and Renaissance, 
much of their great work was yet to be accom- 
plished. Michael Angelo had neither painted the 
Last Judgment nor planned the cupola which 
crowns S. Peter’s. Cellini had not cast his er- 
seus for the Loggia de’ Lanzi, nor had Palladio 
raised San Giorgio from the sea at Venice. Pietro 
Aretino still swaggered in lordly insolence ; and though 
Machiavelli was dead, the “silver histories” of Guic- 
ciardini remained to be written. Bandello, Giraldi, and 
Il Lasca had not published their Vovel/e, nor had 
Cecchi given the last touch to Florentine comedy. It 
was chiefly at Venice, which preserved the ancient 
forms of her oligarchical independence, that the grand 
style of the Renaissance continued to flourish. Titian 
was in his prime; the stars of Tintoretto and Veronese 
had scarcely risen above the horizon. Sansovino was 
still producing masterpieces of picturesque beauty in 
architecture. 

Meanwhile, the new spirit began to manifest itself in 
the foundation of orders and institutions ope order of 
tending to purification of Church discipline. the Thea- 
The most notable of .hese was the order “2¢ 
of Theatines, established by Thiene and Caraffa. 
Its object was to improve the secular priesthood, 
with a view to which end seminaries were opened 
for the education of priests who took monastic 
vows, and devoted themselves to special observ- 
ance of the’r clerical duties, as preachers, admin: 


292 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


istrators of the sacraments, visitors of the poor and 
sick. 

If we compare the spirit indicated by these efforts 
The Inguisi- in the first half of the sixteenth century with 
oberon that of the earlier Renaissance, it will be 
Jesuits. evident that the Italians were ready for re- 
ligious change. They sink, however, into insignifi- 
cance beside two Spanish institutions which about 
the same period added their weight and influence 
to the Catholic revival. These were the Inquisi- 
tion and the Jesuit Order. Paul III. empowered 
Caraffa in 1542 to re-establish the Inquisition in Rome 
upon a new basis, resembling that of the Spanish Holy 
Office, and he sanctioned and confirmed the Company 
of Jesus between the years 1540 and 1543. The 
establishment of the Inquisition gave vast disciplinary 
powers to the Church at the moment when the Council 
of Trent fixed her dogmas, and proclaimed the ab- 
solute authority of the Popes. At the same time, 
the Jesuits, devoted by their founder in blind obe- 
dience to the service of the Papacy, penetrated 
Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the transatlantic 
colonies. ng 

Alessandro Farnese, whom we have been speaking 
of as Paul III., was born in 1468 of an 
ancient but decayed family in the neighbor- 
hood of Bolsena, and received a humanistic education, 
according to the taste of the earlier Renaissance. He 
studied literature with Pomponius Lztus in the Roman 
Academy, and frequented the gardens of Lorenzo de’ 
Medici at Florence. While still a young man of twenty- 
five, he was raised to the cardinalate by Alexander VI. 
This advancement he owed to the influence of his sister 


Paul III. 


va a ee 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 293 


Giulia, surnamed La Bella, who was then the Borgia’s 
mistress. It is characteristic of an epoch during which 
the bold traditions of the fifteenth century still lingered, 
that the undraped statue of this Giulia (representing 
Vanity) was carved for the basement of Paul 
III.’s monument in the choir of S. Peter’s. Both 
as a patron of the arts and as an elegant scholar 
in the Latin and Italian languages, Alessandro 
showed throughout his life the effects of his early 
training. 

Before his elevation to the Papacy, Paul had lived 
through the reigns of Julius II., Leo X., wis large 
Adrian VI., and Clement VII. The pupil experience. 
of Pomponius Lztus, the creature of Roderigo Borgia, 
the representative of Italian manners and culture before 
the age of foreign invasion had changed the face of 
Italy, he was called at the age of sixty-six to steer the 
ship of the Church through troubled waters and in very 
altered circumstances. He had witnessed the rise and 
progress of Protestant revolt in Germany. He had ob- 
served the stirrings of a new and sincere spirit of re- 
ligious gravity, an earnest desire for ecclesiastical re- 
form in his own country. He had watched the duel 
between France and Spain, during the course of which 
his predecessors, Alexander VI. and Julius II, 
restored the secular authority of Rome. He had 
seen that authority humbled to the dust in 
1527, and miraculously rehabilitated at Bologna in 
1530. Finally, he had assisted at the coronation 
of Charles V.; and when he took the reins of power 
into his hands, he was well aware with what 
a formidable force he had to cope in the great 
Emperor. 


294 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


The cardinals whom Paul promoted on his accession 
His meas- included the chief of those men who strove 


Li br in vain for a concordat between Rome and 
stem tne . . ‘ 

Reforma- Reformation ; it also included the man who 
tion, stamped Rome with the impress of the 


counter-Reformation. Yet Caraffa would not have had 
the fulcrum needed for this decisive exertion of power, 
had it not been for another act of Paul’s reign. This 
was the convening of the Council of Trent. Paul’s 
attitude towards the Council, which he summoned with 
reluctance, which he frustrated as far as in him lay, and 
the final outcome of which he was far from anticipating, 
illustrates in a most decisive manner his destiny as Pope 
of the transition. 

Paul died on November 10, 1549. Passing over the 
short and uneventful reigns of Julius III. 
and Marcello II., in May, 1555, the Cardinal 
Giovanni Pietro Caraffa was elected, with the title of 
Paul IV. He sprang from a high and puissant family 
of Naples. He was a man of fierce, impulsive, and 
uncompromising temper, animated by two ruling pas- 
sions—burning hatred of the Spaniards who were tram- 
pling on his native land, and ecclesiastical ambition 
intensified by rigid Catholic orthodoxy. The first act 
of his reign was a vain effort to expel the Spaniards 
from Italy by resorting to the old device of French 
assistance. The abdication of Charles V. had placed 
Philip II. on the throne of Spain, and the settlement 
whereby the Imperial crown passed to his brother 
Ferdinand had substituted a feeble for a powerful 
Emperor. But Philip’s disengagement from the cares 
of Germany left him more at liberty to maintain his 
preponderance in southern Europe. It was fortunate 


Paul IV, 


eh ee 





THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 295 


for Paul IV. that Philip was a bigoted Catholic and a 
superstitiously obedient son of the Church. These two 
potentates, who began to reign in the same year, were 
destined, after the settlement of their early quarrel, to 
lead and organize the Catholic counter-Reformation. 
The Duke of Guise, at the Pope’s request, marched a 
French army into Italy. Paul raised a body of mer- 
cenaries who were chiefly German Protestants, and 
opened negotiations with Soliman, entreating the Turk 
to make a descent on Sicily by sea. Into such a 
fanatically false position was the chief of Christendom, 
the most Catholic of all the Pontiffs, driven by his jeal- 
ous patriotism. 

The Duke of Alva put the forces at his disposal in 
the Two Sicilies into motion, and advanced Philip IL. 
to meet the Duke of Guise. But, while the of Spain 
campaign dragged on, Philip won the de- riches 
cisive battle of S. Quentin. The Guise tage ofhis 
hurried back to France, and Alva marched success. 
unresisted upon Rome. There was no reason why the 
Eternal City should not have been subjected to another 
siege and sack. The will was certainly not wanting 
in Alva to humiliate the Pope, who never spoke of 
Spaniards but as renegade Jews, Marrani, heretics, and 
personifications of pride. Philip, however, wrote re- 
minding his general that the date of his birth (1527) 
was that of Rome’s calamity, and vowing that he would 
not signalize the first year of his reign by inflicting 
fresh miseries upon the capital of Christendom. Alva 

was ordered to make peace on terms both honorable 
and advantageous to his Holiness. Consequently, 
when Alva entered Rome in peaceful pomp, he did 
homage for his master to the Pope, who was generously 


296 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


willing to absolve him for his past offences. Paul IV. 
publicly exulted in the abasement of his conquerors, 
declaring that it would teach kings in future the obes 
dience they owed to the head of the Church. But Alva 
did not conceal his discontent. It would have been 
better, he said, to have sent the Pope to sue for peace 
and pardon at Brussels, than to allow him to obtain the 
one and grant the other on these terms. 

Paul now turned his attention, with the fiery passion 
The Pope that distinguished him, to the reformation 
ce eiegizer’ Of ecclesiastical abuses. On his accession 
abuses. he had published a Bull declaring that this 
would be a principal object of his reign. Nor had 
he in the midst of other occupations forgotten his 
engagement. A congregation specially appointed 
for examining, classifying, and remedying such abuses 
had been established. It was divided into three 
committees, consisting of eight cardinals, fifteen 
prelates, and fifty men of learning. At the same 
time the Inquisition was vigorously maintained. Paul 
extended its jurisdiction, empowered it to use. tor- 
ture, and was constant in his attendance on its meet- 
ings and “acts of faith.” But now that his plans for 
the expulsion of the Spaniards had failed, and his 
nephews had been hurled for misconduct from the high 
positions to which he had raised them, an exercise of 
justice which spoke well for his sincerity, there re- 
mained no other interest to distract his mind. Every 
day witnessed the promulgation of some new edict 
touching monastic discipline, simony, sale of offices, 
Church ritual, performance of clerical duties, and ap- 
pointment to ecclesiastical dignities. It was his favor- 
ite boast that there would be no need of a council to 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 297 


restore the church to purity, since he was doing it. 
And, indeed, his measures formed the nucleus of the 
- Tridentine decrees upon this topic in the final sessions 
of the council, Under this government Rome assumed 
an air of exemplary behavior which struck foreigners 
with mute astonishment. Cardinals were compelled to 
preach in their Basilicas. The Pope himself, who was 
vain of his eloquence, preached. Gravity of manners, 
external signs of piety, a composed and contrite face, 
ostentation of orthodoxy by frequent confession and 
attendance at the mass, became fashionable. 

The successor of Paul IV. was a man of very differ- 
ent quality and antecedents. Giovanni An- 
gelo Medici sprang not from the Florentine 
house of Medici, but from an obscure Lombard stem. 
Paul III. observed him, took him into favor, and ad- 
vanced him to the cardinalate. He was hated by Paul 
IV., who drove him away from Rome. It is probable that 
this antipathy constituted something to his elevation to 
the Papacy, when he assumed the title of Pius IV. Of 
humble origin, a jurist and a worldling, pacific in his 
policy, devoted to Spanish interests, cautious and con- 
ciliatory in the conduct of affairs, ignorant of theology 
and indifferent to niceties of discipline, he was at all 
points the exact opposite of the fiery Neapolitan noble, 
the inquisitor and fanatic, the haughty trampler upon 
kings, the armed antagonist of Alva, the brusque, im- 
pulsive autocrat, the purist of orthodoxy, who preceded 
him. His trusted counsellor was Cardinal Morone, 
whom Paul had thrown into the dungeons of the Inqui- 
sition on a charge of favoring Lutheran opinions, and 
who was liberated by the rabble in their fury. This 
was in itself significant of the new régime which now 


Pius IV. 


id 


298 LHE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


began in Rome. Morone, like his master, understood 
that the Church could best be guided by diplomacy and 
acts of peace. The two together brought the Council 
of Trent to that conclusion which left an undisputed 
sovereignty in theological and ecclesiastical affairs to 
the Papacy. It would have been impossible for a man 
of Caraffa’s stamp to achieve what these sagacious 
temporizers and adroit managers effected. 

Without advancing the same arrogant claims to spir- 
His concilia- itual supremacy as Paul had made, Pius 
tory policy. was by no means a feeble pontiff. He 
knew that the temper of the times demanded wise 
concessions; but he also knew how to win through 
these concessions the reality of power. It was he who 
initiated and firmly followed the policy of alliance 
between the Papacy and the Catholic sovereigns. In- 
stead of asserting the interests of the Church in antag- 
onism to secular potentates, he undertook to prove 
that their interests were identical. Militant Protes- 
tantism threatened the civil no less than the ecclesias- 
tical order. The episcopacy attempted to liberate it- 
self from monarchical and pontifical authority alike. 
Pius proposed to the autocrats of Europe a compact 
for mutual defence, divesting the Holy See of some 
of its privileges, but requiring in return the recognition 
of its ecclesiastical absolutism. In all difficult nego- 
tiations he was wont to depend upon himself, treating 
his counsellors as agents rather than as peers, and 
holding the threads of diplomacy in his own hands. 
Thus he was able to transact business as a sovereign 
with sovereigns, and came to terms with them by 
means of personal correspondence. The reconstruc- 
tion of Catholic Christendom, which took visible shape 


Be tae - = 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 299 


in the decrees of the Tridentine Council, was actually 
settled in the courts of Spain, Austria, France, and 
Rome. The Fathers of the Council were chiefly the 
mouthpieces of royal and papal cabinets. 

Pius IV. was greatly assisted in his work by cir- 
cumstances of which he knew how to avail _. 
himself. Had it not been for the renewed dene ob- 
Spiritual activity of Catholicism, he might cart seh 
not have been able to carry that work 
through. He took no interest in theology, and felt no 
sympathy for the Inquisition. But he prudently left 
that institution alone to pursue its function of policing 
the ecclesiastical realm. The Jesuits rendered him 
important assistance by propagating their doctrine of 
passive obedience to Rome. Spain supported him 
with the massive strength of a nation Catholic to 
the core; and his own independence, as a prudent 
man of business, uninfluenced by bigoted prejudices 
or partialities for any sect,;enabled him to manipulate 
all resources at his disposal for the main object of 
uniting Catholicism and securing Papal supremacy. 

Soon after the election of Pius the state of Europe 
made the calling of a general council ep he ee 
dispensable. Paul’s impolitic pretensions tions in 
had finally alienated England from the Europe from 
Roman Church. Scotland was on the point ane aren 
of declaring herself Protestant. The Huguenots were 
growing stronger every year in France, the Queen 
Mother, Catherine de’ Medici, being at that time 
inclined to favor them. The Confession of Augs- 
burg had long been recognized in Germany. The 
whole of Scandinavia, with Denmark, was lost to 
Catholicism. The Low Countries, in spite of Philip, 


300 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


Alva, and the Inquisition, remained intractable. Bo- 
hemia, Hungary, and Poland were alienated and ripe 
for open schism. The tenets of Zwingli had taken 
root in German Switzerland. Calvin was gaining 
ground in the French Cantons. Geneva had become 
a stationary fortress, the stronghold of belligerent re- 
formers, whence heresy sent forth its missionaries, 
and promulgated subversive doctrines through the me- 
dium of an ever active press. In 1559 the outlook 
for the Church was very gloomy: no one could predict 
whether a general council might not increase her diffi- 
culties by weakening the Papal power, and sowing 
further seeds of discord among her few faithful ad- 
herents. 

The council was opened again at Trent, by Cardinal 
Council of  F0N24ga and three others, on January 15) 
Trent 1562. In spite of its inauspicious com- 
reopened. mencement, Pius declared the council a 
general council, and that it should be recognized as a 
continuation of that council which had been held in the 
same town in 1545. ‘This rendered the co-operation of 
Protestants impossible, since they would have been 
compelled to accept the earlier dogmatic resolutions 
of the Fathers. Fresh and fresh difficulties and discus- 
sions arose, until Pius adhered to two important lines of 
policy, the energetic pursuit of which speedily brought 
the council to a peaceful termination. These were to 
meet the demand for a searching reformation of the 
Church with cheerful acquiescence, but to oppose a 
counter-demand that the secular states in all their 
ecclesiastical relations should at the same time be re 
formed. The latter would imply a threat of alienating 
patronage and revenue from the princes; and his re 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 301 


fusal indicated plainly that the tiara and the crowns 
had interests in common. He sought to develop the 
diplomatic system upon which he had already tenta- 
tively entered. 

The council terminated in December with an act of 
submission which placed all its decrees at phe as 
the pleasure of the Papal sanction. Pius ae dedstadd 
was wise enough to pass and ratify the tothe 
decrees of the Tridentine Fathers by a Bull pclae 
dated on December 26, 1563, reserving to the 
Papal sovereign the sole right of interpreting them 
in doubtful or disputed cases. This he could well afford 
to do; for not an article had been penned without his 
concurrence, and not a stipulation had been made 
without a previous understanding with the Catholic 
powers. The very terms, moreover, by which his 
ratification was conveyed secured his supremacy, and 
conferred upon his successors and himself the privileges 
of a court of ultimate appeal. At no previous period 
in the history of the Church had so wide, so undefined, 
and so unlimited an authority been accorded to the See 
of Rome. 

The personal qualities of Carlo Borromeo were of 
grave importance in the election of a succes- 
sor tohis uncle. He had ruled the Church 
during the last years of Pius IV., and the newly- 
- appointed cardinals were his dependents. Had he at- 
tempted to exert his power for his own election, he might 
have met with opposition. He chose to use it for what 
he considered the deepest Catholic interests. This un- 
selfishness led to the selection of a man, Michele 
Ghislieri, whose antecedents rendered him formidable 
to the still corrupt members of the Roman hierarchy, 


Pius V. 


302 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


but whose character was precisely of the stamp required 
for giving solidity to the new phase on which the 
Church had entered. As Pius IV. had been the exact 
opposite to Paul IV., so Pius V. was a complete con- 
trast to Pius IV. He had passed the best years of his 
life as chief of the Inquisition. Devoted to theology 
and to religious exercises, he lacked the legal and 
mundane faculties of his predecessor. But these were 
no longer necessary. What was now required was a 
Pope who should, by personal example and rigid dis- 
cipline, impress Rome with the principles of orthodoxy 
and reform. Carlo Borromeo, self-conscious, perhaps, 
of the political incapacity which others noticed in him, 
and fervently zealous for the Catholic revival, devolved 
this duty on Michele Ghislieri, who completed the 
work of his two predecessors. 

Pius V. embodied in himself those ascetic virtues 
Phe leer which Carlo Borromeo and the Jesuits were 
ofhisad- determined to propagate throughout the 
ministra- Catholic world. He never missed a day’s 
is attendance on the prescribed services of 
the Church, said frequent masses, fasted at regular in- 
tervals, and continued to wear the coarse woollen shirt 
which formed a part of his friar’s costume. In his 
piety there was nohypocrisy. ‘The people saw streams 
of tears pouring from the eyes of the Pontiff bowed in 
ecstasy before the Host. A rigid reformation of the 
churches, monasteries, and clergy was immediately set 
on foot throughout the Papal States. Monks and 
nuns complained that austerities were expected from 
them which were not included in the rules to which 
they vowed obedience. The severity of the Inquisi- 
tion was augmented, and the /ndex Lxpurgatorius 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 303 


- began to exercise a stricter jurisdiction over books. 
The Pope spent half his time at the Holy Office, 
inquiring into cases of heresy of ten or twenty years’ 
standing. From Florence he caused Carnesecchi to 
be dragged to Rome and burned; from Venice the 
refugee Guido Zanetti of Fano was delivered over to 
his tender mercies; and the excellent Carranza, Arch- 
bishop of Toledo, was sent from Spain to be condemned 
to death before the Roman tribunal. Criminal justice, 
meanwhile, was administered with greater purity; and 
the composition of crimes for money, if not wholly 
abolished, was moderated. In the collation to 
bishoprics and other benefices, the same spirit of 
equity appeared; for Pius inquired scrupulously 
into the character and fitness of aspirants after 
office. 

While Pius V., lean, wasted, with sunken eyes and 
snow-white hair, looking ten years older sme catholic 
than he really was, lived this exemplary States sup- 
monastic life upon the Papal throne, he Port him. 
ruled Catholic Christendom more absolutely than 
any one of his predecessors. As the Papacy 
recognized its dependence on the sovereigns, so the 
sovereigns in their turn perceived that religious con- 
formity was the best safeguard of their secular au- 
thority. Therefore the Catholic States subscribed, one 


after the other, to the Tridentine profession of faith, 


and adopted one system in matters of Church disci- 
pline. A new Breviary and a new Missal were pub- 
lished with the Papal sanction. Seminaries were 
established for the education of ecclesiastics, and the 
Jesuits labored in their propaganda. The Inquisition 
and the Congregation of the Index redoubled their 


304 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


efforts to stamp out heresy by fire and iron, and by the 
suppression or mutilation of books. 

Under these circumstances the humanistic and 
The artistic impulses of the Renaissance reached 
oe Sr the point of exhaustion; the printing-presses, 
arrested. © which had been so numerous and active at 
Venice, were suddenly reduced to less than half 
their number; classical studies languished at the 
Universities ; and, what was still more serious, the 
philosophical speculations, which had been begun 
with ardor in the prime of the Renaissance, received 
a fatal check, just at the very moment when the 
versatile Italian genius seemed to be upon the point 
of contributing a new metaphysic to Europe. Of 
those who fell in the intellectual revolt against ecclesi- 
astical authority and tradition, there were none of 
clearer vision, or of greater intrepidity as a writer, 
than the one we select to illustrate the perils attending 
this encounter with the reactionary forces which the 
Church was so well disposed and so able to array 
against those who fell. 

Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 at Nola, an ancient 
Giordano | Greek city close to Naples. His parents, 
Bruno. though people of some condition, were poor s 
and this circumstance may probably account for his en- 
tering the monastery of the Dominicans at Naples before 
he had completed his fifteenth year. Even in his boy- 
hood, and after he had received priest’s orders at the age 
of twenty-four, he showed a want of prudence in his in- 
tercourse with his superiors. Some speculative doubts 
about the metaphysics of the Trinity led him into such 
danger with the Inquisition that he took flight, made 
his way to Rome, and obtained admittance at the 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 3095 


monastery of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. News soon 
reached him that the prosecution begun at Naples 
was being transferred to the metropolis. This implied 
so/serious a danger that there was no other resource 
open to him but to fling away his monk’s habit and to 
quit the city in this comparative disguise. 

We must pass briefly over the many years which 
Bruno now spent in wandering from city to His wander- 
city, through the North of Italy to Geneva, peels lead 
where he naturally found no resting-place, England. 
for he had an even fiercer antipathy for dis- 
senting than for orthodox bigotry. In 1577 we find 
him at Toulouse, lecturing, and obtaining the degree 
of Doctor in Philosophy with a readership in the Uni- 
versity. This post he held for two years, and then, with- 
out apparent reason, moved on to Paris, where he re- 
mained for four years under the favorable notice of 
Henri III., who, on Bruno’s departure for England, 
supplied him with introductions to the French Ambas- 
sador in London, Michel de Castelnau. In the house 
and in the suite of thisexcellent man, Bruno passed two 
years of domestic and industrious ease, during which 
some of his most important works were published. 
Besides metaphysical subjects, we have animated pict- 
ures of the unsavory condition of the streets of Lon- 

_ dor and the rough manners of the lower classes in the 
time of Elizabeth. He is hardly more complimentary 
to the “pedants and ignorant professors of the old 
learning ” whom he encountered in a visit to Oxford. 
Of his own appearance, now in his thirty-seventh year, 
we gather that he was a man of middling height, spare 
figure, and of olive complexion, wearing a short chest- 


nut-colored beard. Hespoke with vivacity and copious 
20 


506 THE CATHOLIC REACTION, 


rhetoric, aiming rather at force than at purity of dic 
tion, indulging in trenchant metaphors to adumbrate 
recondite thoughts, passing from grotesque images to 
impassioned flights of declamation, blending acute 
arguments and pungent satires with grave mystical dis- 
courses. The impression of originality produced by 
his familiar conversation rendered him agreeable to 
princes. 

His wanderings, to be soon now terminated, led him 
He falls into again through Paris to Wittenberg and 
o laguise, other places in Germany, and in the spring 
tion. of 1590 he took shelter in a Carmelite 
monastery at Frankfort-on-the-Main, where he lived 
on terms of intimacy with the printers Wechel 
and Fischer and other men of learning, and where 
nothing in the way of persecution arose to dis- 
turb him. But in an evil hour he accepted an invita- 
tion to visit Venice from Giovanni Mocenigo, who be- 
longed to one of the most illustrious of the still sur- 
viving noble families of that city. The long line 
of their palaces on the Grand Canal, and _ the 
one especially in which Lord Byron lodged, -has im- 
pressed the mind of every tourist. This Mocenigo was 
a man verging on middle life, superstitious, subservient 
to his priest, but alive in a furtive way to perilous 
ideas. A book of Bruno’s, perhaps the De Monade, 
had fallen in his way, and he seems to have imagined 
that Bruno might teach him occult science, or direct 
him on a royal road to knowledge. He was soon unde- 
ceived with regard to this, and in his suspicious dis- 
content began to regard Bruno as an impostor who, in- 
stead of furnishing the wares for which he bargained, 
put him off with declamations on the nature of the 


Se ee ne ee eee ae 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 307 


universe. What was worse, he became convinced 
that this charlatan was an obstinate heretic. Under 
these circumstances, “ induced by the obligation of his 
conscience and by order of his confessor,” he on May 
23, 1592, denounced his guest to the Inquisition, 

Bruno appeared before his judges on May 29, His 
examination continued at intervals from this 
date till July 30. His depositions consist for 
the most part of an autobiographical statement which he 
volunteered, and of a frank elucidation of his philosophi- 
cal doctrines in their relation to orthodox belief. Over 
and over again he relies for his defence upon the old 
distinction between philosophy and faith, claiming to 
have advocated views as a thinker which he did not 
hold asa Christian. At the very end of his examina- 
tion, he placed himself in the hands of his judges, 
“confessing his errors with a willing mind,’ acknowl- 
edging that he had “erred and strayed from the 
Church,” begging for such castigation as should not 
“bring public dishonor on the sacred robe which he 
had worn,” and promising to “show a noteworthy 
reform, and to recompense the scandal he had caused 
by edification at least equal in magnitude.” 

We do not behold him again till he enters once more 
the Minerva at Rome to receive his death is gentence 
sentence on Feb. g, 1600, after enduring and death. 
seven years of imprisonment. What happened in 
the interval is almost blank. On that day he was 
brought before the Holy Office at S. Maria sopra 
Minerva. In the presence of assembled cardinals, 
theologians, and civil magistrates, his heresies were 
first recited. Then he was excommunicated and 
degraded from his priestly and monastic offices. 


His trial 


308 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


Lastly, he was handed over to the secular arm, “ to be 
punished with all clemency and without effusion of 
blood.” ‘Thereupon Bruno uttered the significant and 
memorable words: ‘“ Peradventure ye pronounce this 
sentence on me with a greater fear than I receive it.” 
They were the last words he spoke in public. He was 
removed to the state prison, where he remained eight 
days, in order that he might have time to repent. But 
he continued obdurate. Being an apostate priest and 
a relapsed heretic, he could hope for no remission of 
his sentence. Therefore, on Feb. 17, he marched to a 
certain and horrible death, The stake was set up on 
the Campo di Fiora. Just before the pile was set on 
fire, they offered him the crucifix. He turned his face 
from it in stern disdain. It was not Christ, but his 
own soul, wherein he believed the Deity resided, that 
sustained Bruno at the supreme moment. No cry, no 
groan, escaped his lips. Kepler, who had conceived a - 
high opinion of Bruno’s speculations, and pointed him 
out to Galileo as the man who had divined the infinity 
of solar systems in their correlation to one infinite order 
of the universe, though not an eye-witness, informed 
his correspondent Brenger that Bruno “ bore his agoniz- 
ing death with fortitude, abiding by the asseveration 
that all religions are vain, and that God identifies Him- 
self with the world, circumference and centre.” 

As a personality, endowed with singular energy and 
remarkable independence, Bruno towers 


His philo- F 
sophical eminent among the powerful characters of 
were that age so rich in individualities. The two 


currents of Renaissance curiosity, which had produced 
criticism and naturalism, met and blended in his intel- 
lect. As a thinker, his chief merit was to have perceived 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 399 


bearings of the Copernican discovery. He saw that 
the substitution of the heliocentric for the former geo- 
centric theory of our system destroyed at one blow 
large portions of the Christian mythology. In other 
speculations he anticipated to a large extent the phi- 
losophies of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hegel, and 
the most recent conclusions of natural science. In his 
treatment of theology and ethics he was no less original 
and prophetic. It is obvious that he regarded no one 
creed as final, no sacred book as exclusively inspired, 
no single race as chosen, no teacher or founder of a 
faith as divine, no Church as privileged with salvation. 

The pontificates of Paul IV., Pius IV., and Pius V.,, 
differing as they did in very important Catholicism 
details, had achieved a solid triumph for gaing in 
reformed Catholicism, of which both the strength. 
diplomatical and the ascetic parties in the Church, 
Jesuits and Theatines, were eager to take advantage. 
A new spirit in the Roman polity prevailed, upon the 
reality of which its future force depended; and the 
men who embodied this spirit had no mind to relax 
their hold on its administration. After the death of 
Pius V. they had to deal with a Pope who resembled 
his penultimate predecessor, Pius I1V., more than the 
last pontiff. 

Ugo Buoncompagno, the scion of a dourgeois family 
settled in Bologna, began his career as a 
jurist. He took orders in middle life, was 
promoted to the cardinalate, and attained the supreme 
honor of the Holy See in 1572. He was a good com- 
panion, easy of access, genial in manners, remarkable 
for the facility with which he cast off care and gave 
himself to sanguine expectations. In an earlier period 


Gregory XII. 


310 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


of Church history he might have reproduced the Pa- 
pacy of Paul II.or Innocent VIII. As it was, Gregory 
XIII. fell at once under the potent influence of Jesuit 
directors. His confessor, the Spanish Francesco da 
Toledo, impressed upon him the necessity of following 
the footsteps of Paul IV. and Pius V. It was made 
plain that he must conform to the new tendencies of 
the Catholic Church; and in his neophyte’s zeal he 
determined to outdo his predecessors. The example 
of Pius V. was not only imitated but surpassed. 
Gregory XIII. celebrated three masses a week, built 
churches, and enforced parochial obedience throughout 
his capital. The Jesuits in his reign attained to the 
maximum of their wealth and influence. 

It was noticed that the mode of life in Rome during 
The satisfac. the reign of Gregory XIII. struck a just 
tion he gives balance between license and austerity, and 
to the city is : . : 
wantingin that general satisfaction pervaded society. 
the country. Outside the city this contentment did not 
prevail. Gregory threw his States into disorder 
by reviving obsolete rights of the Church on lands 
mortgaged or granted with obscure titles. The petty 
barons rose in revolt, armed their peasants, fomented 
factions in the country towns, and filled the land with 
brigands. Under the leadership of men like Alfonso 
Piccolomini and Roberto Malatesta, these marauding 
bands assumed the proportion of armies. The neigh- 
boring Italian States—Tuscany, Venice, Naples, 
Parma, all of whom had found the Pope arbitrary and 
aggressive in his dealings with them—encouraged the 
bandits by offering them an asylum and refusing to 
co-operate with Gregory for their reduction. 


en ae ee 


THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 311 


His successor, Sixtus V., found the whole Papa} 
dominion in confusion. It was impossible gixtus v. 

to collect the taxes. Life and property were Puts the ot 
nowhere safe. By a series of savage enact- Catholicism. 
ments and stern acts of justice, Sixtus swept the 
brigands from his States. He then applied his 
powerful will to the collection of money and 
the improvement of his provinces. Encouragement 
was extended not only to agriculture, but also to indus- 
tries and manufactures. The country towns obtained 
wise financial concessions, and the unpopular resump- 
tion of lapsed lands and fiefs was discontinued. Roads 
and bridges throughout the States of the Church were 
repaired. Rome meanwhile began to assume her pres- 
ent aspect by various architectural undertakings, and 
fresh water was brought into the city by the famous 
Acqua Felice, Sixtus loved building, but he was no 
lover of antiquity. For pagan monuments of art he 
showed a monastic animosity, dispersing or mutilating 
the statues of the Vatican and Capitol; turning a 
Minerva into an image of the Faith by putting a cross 
in her hand; surmounting the columns of Trajan and 
Antonine with figures of Peter and Paul; destroying 
the Septizonium of Severus and wishing to lay sacri- 
legious hands on Cecilia Metella’s tomb. To medie- 
val relics he was hardly less indifferent. The old build- 
ings of the Lateran were thrown down to make room for 
the heavy modern palace. But, to atone in some measure 
for these acts of vandalism, Sixtus placed the cupola 
upon S. Peter’s, and raised the obelisk in the great 
piazza which was destined to be circled with Bernini’s 
colonnades. This obelisk he topped with a cross. 
Christian inscriptions, signalizing the triumph of the 


312 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 


Pontiff over infidel emperors, the victory of Calvary 
over Olympus, the superiority of Rome’s saints and 
martyrs to Rome’s old deities and heroes, left no doubt 
that what remained of the Imperial city had been sub- 
dued to Christ and purged of paganism. Nothing was 
more absent from the mind of Sixtus than any attempt 
to reconcile Ancient and Modern. He was bent on 
proclaiming the ultimate triumph of Catholicism, not 
only over antiquity, but also over the Renaissance. 


‘THE END. 


~-NDEX. 


ReCADEMY, the Florentine: Ma- 
chiavelli’s Discorsi delivered 
there. 142 

Academy of Jovianus Pontanus 
at Naples, 185 

Academy of the Palazzo Ver- 
nio, 289 

Academy of Pomponius Lztus 
at Rome, 179 

Academy, Roman: its mem- 
bers tortured by Paul IL., 
58 

Adriano of Corneto, Cardinal: 
alleged connection with the 
death of Alexander VI., 75 

Adrian VI., Pope: elected by 
political intrigue, 81; his 
simplicity of life and horror 
at Roman immorality, 82; in- 
effectual efforts at reform, 2d. 

Alberti, Leo Battista: many- 
sided genius: Latin poet, 
musician, painter, architect, 
166; his comedy PAzlodoxius 
published as an antique by 
‘Lepidus Comicus,’ 2d.; his 
work as an architect, 204 

Albertinelli, Mariotto, painter, 
228 

Albizzi, Rinaldo degli, 150 

Aldi, the, printers, 9 

Alexander, a Greek scholar, 


10 
Alexander III., Pope, 24 


Alexander VI. (Roderigo Bor: 
gia), Pope: his external at- 
tractions, 66; destroyed the 
factions of Colonna and Or- 
sini, 67; laid real basis for 
Papal temporal power, 70.; 
traffic with Sultan Bajazet 
against Italian princes, 68; 
the tunic worn by Christ 
part of the Pope’s reward for 
the murder of Prince Djem, 
68; Alexander establishes 
the censorship of the press, 
69; he was grossly immoral, 
but not gluttonous, zd.; pater- 
nal ambition for his children: 
their alliances, 70; murder 
of his son, the Duke of 
Gandia, 71; Alexander de- 
votes himself to building up 
the fortunes of his son Ce- 
sare, 72; alliance with Louis 
XII. of France, with the 
vision of an Italian sov- 
ereignty, 73; atrocity of his 
conquests in Italy, 24.; as- 
Sassinations, murders, and 
bribery, by Alexander and 
Cesare, 74; the promotion 
of his family his sole con- 
sideration, 2d.; his mysteri- 
ous death, 75; his interposi- 
tion in Florentine affairs 
against Savonarola, 99 


313 


314 INDEX. 


Alfonso the Magnanimous, of pokes 206 sg.; decadence, 
Aragon and Sicily, 114 sq. 207 

Alfonso II. of Naples (son of} Aretino, Carlo (Marsuppini): 
Ferdinand I.); his strange sketch of his career, 155; his 
character, 116; died in a]! prodigious memory, 2d. 
monastery, zd. Aretino, Lionardo, Florentine 

Allegri, Antonio: one of the} historian, 177 
four greatest artists, 228 Aretino, Pietro: typical ruffian 





Alva, Duke of, 295 | ia an age of ruffianism, 265; 
Ambrogini, Benedetto, father} his merit as an author, 266: 
of Poliziano, 167 his Ars Poetica, 1b. 
Ammanati, Bartolommeo, | Ariosto, Lodovico: facts of his 
sculptor, 217 life, 250 sgg.; in the serwice 
Angelico, Fra, painter, 223 | of Cardinal Ippolito d’ Este 
Antonio di San Gallo, archi-] and, later, of Duke Alfonse 
tect, 206 I. (Ferrara), 251 sg.; the Or. 
Ansiani, magistrates in Italian lando Furioso, 252; his com- 
cities, 27 edies produced at Ferrara 
Apuiia, republic of, 15 and Rome, 74.; official bes 
Aquileia, patriarchate of, 18 ishment to the country, 2593 


Arabs, the: debt of Europe to| return to Ferrara, marriage, 
them for the conservation] and death, 254; his Satires, 
and transmission of Greek 255; account of his plays, 
thought, 122; their influence 265 
on architecture in Sicily, 199| Aristotle, first printed edition 

Arcadian romance, Italian, 269} of, 9 
$99. Arnold of Brescia, 24 

Architecture, Italian: charac-| Arnolfo del Cambio, architect; 
teristic diversity of Italian his works in Florence, 201% 
communities displayed in| _ sg. 
their buildings, 198; the] Arrvaddiaci, nickname of the 
geology of different districts opponents of both Savona- 
often determined the styles} rola and the Medici, 99 
of architecture, zd.; influence | Ariz, the, in Italian cities, 32 
of commerce or of conquest, Arts: degeneracy of the plastie 
199; Romanesque style, 26.;| arts in the Middle Ages, 6; 
ill success of Gothic, 200;; change wrought in them by 
growth of domestic architect- 
ure, 201; municipal build- 
ings, 26.; work of Arnolfo 
del Cambio, 24,; date of the 
Renaissance of architecture:| genius, 24.; Italian architec 
Brunelleschi’s work, 202 sg.;|_ ture varied with the locality, 
Alberti’s, 203 sg.; Bramante, 198. See also Architecture; 
204 sg.; Raphael as archi- Sculpture; Painting. 
tect, 205 sg.; Jacopo Sanso-| Asti, Charles VIII. at, 109 
vino’s buildings at Venice, | Aurispa, Giovanni: spent his 
206; Michael Angelo as! early life at Canstantinople, 


share in the emancipation of 


nance of art in the Italiar 


ee 


the Renaissance, 7; their - 


the intellect, 197; predomi-. 


oa ~ J 
en ae ae en re eae 


INDEX. 


315 


195; his school at Ferrara, | Beccadelli, Antonio: his early 


tb. 
Averrhoes, Averrhoists, free- 
thinkers of the fourteenth 
century, 128 


Baccio b’AGNOLO, architect, 
206 

Baccio della Porta. See Barto- 
lommeo, Fra, 

.Bacon, Roger, 4, I! 

Baglioni, Malatesta, 288 

Baglioni, the (Perugia), 113 

Bagnolo, Peace of, 60 

Baily (Bazlo, Consul-General) 
of Constantinople, 188 

Bajazet, Sultan: his relations 
with Alexander VI., 68 sg. 

Bandello, Matteo, Movellicre - 
his life, 257 

Bandinelli, Baccio, sculptor, 
217 

Bandini, Bernardo, assassin of 
Giuliano de’ Medici, 60 sg. 

Baptistery, Florence, the 
bronze gates of, 211 

Barbaro, Francesco, 194 


Barbavara, Francesco, para- 
mour of Gian Galeazzo’s 
wife, 42 


Barcelona, Treaty of (1529), 
278 
Bargello, 
139 
Baroccio, Federigo, painter, 236 
Bartolommeo, Fra _  (Barto- 
lommeo di Paolo del Fat- 
torino, or Baccio della 
Porta): his profile of Savo- 
narola as S. Peter Martyr, 
93; his work as an artist, 

227 

Barzizza, Gasparino da: culti- 
vator of the art of letter- 
writing, 130 

Basaiti, Marco, painter, 230 

Beaujeu, Anne de, sister of 
Charles VIII., 105 


Florentine prison, 


life, 181; wide circulation of 
his elegies called Hermaphro- 
ditus, 1b.; crowned poet by 
Emperor Sigismund, 182; 
the book condemned by the 
Church, 182; the author 
grows rich and honored, 726, 

Beccafumi, Domenico, painter, 
238 

Begio, Maffeo, poet, 173 

Bellini, Jacopo, Gentile, and 
Giovanni, painters, 230 sgq. 

Beltrafio, Giovanni Antonio, 
painter, 234 

Belvedere gallery, the, walled 
up by Adrian VI., 82 

Benevento, duchy of, 14 sg. 

Benozzo Gozzoli, painter, 223 

Benucci, Alessandra, wife of 
Ariosto, 254 

Berengar, the last Italian king, 
17 

Bernardo Fiorentino, 
tect, 204 

Bessarion, Cardinal: originally 
a member of the Greek 
Church, 178; his palace at 
Rome the meeting-place of 
scholars of all nations, 2d. 

Bianchi, Italian faction, 136 

Bizi, nickname of friends of 
the Medici at Florence, 99 

Biondo, Flavio: patronized by 
Eugenius IV., 173; his pro- 
digious learning, 7.; not 
duly appreciated by his cons 
temporaries, 174. 

Bishops, Italian; on the side of 
the people in their first strug- 
gles for independence, 18 

Bissolo, painter, 230 

Boabdil, 117 

Boccaccio, Giovanni; his con. 
version from commerce to 
literature, 125; friendship 
with Petrarch, 126 ; influence 
on vernacular literature, 127; 


archi- 


316 


at the court of Robert of 
Anjou, 181; the first and 
most brilliant age of Italian 
literature ended with him, 
241; his contempt for chival- 
rous romance, 245; his desire 
to fuse classic and medizval 
modes of thought and style, 
246. 
Boccaccio (Ferrarese ambassa- 
dor), on Alexander VI., 69 
Boiardo, Matteo Maria, Count 
of Scandiano: his life, 248 sg. ; 
his Orlando Innamorato and 
other works, 249 

Bologna: the vicissitudes of, 
41, 113; the mustering of 
Italian princes there for 
Charles V.’s coronation, 580 


sqq. 

Bookseller, the first modern, 
196 

Borgia, Cesare, son of Alexan- 
der VI.: made Cardinal and 
Bishop of Valentia, 70; his 
abominable character, 72 5¢.; 
created Duke of Valence and 
married to Charlotte of Na- 
varre, 73; atrocities in the 
conquest of Italian cities, 74; 
his end, 75 

Borgia, Giovanni, son (or 
grandson) of Alexander VI.: 
received dukedoms of Nepi 
and Camerino, 70 

Borgia, Isabella, 66 

Borgia, Lucrezia, daughter of 
Alexander VI., 70 

Borromeo, Carlo: his influence 
in the election of Pius V., 301 

Borso, Duke (Ferrara), Ig 

Botticelli, Sandro, painter, 224 

Bourbon, Constable, killed at 
assault on Rome (1527), 83 

Bramante: his work as an 
architect, 204 sg.; propaga- 
tors of his influence, 205 

Brera, the, Milan, 234 


INDEX. 


Brescia: Savonarola at, 91; the 
storming of, 95 

Brigonnet, Bishop of St. Malo, 
74, 14 

Brigands, armed bands of, in 
Italy (1572), 310 

Bronzino, Angelo, painter, 238 

Brunelleschi, Filippo: his visit 
to Rome in 1403 the date of 
the Renaissance in architec- 
ture, 202; his buildings, 202 
Sq. 

Bruni, Lionardo: his humble 
origin, 153; fame as a Latin- 
ist, 22.; his literary work, 
154; honored with a public 
funeral ‘after the manner of 
the ancients,’ and with a 
monument, 154 sg. 

Bruno, Giordano: his early 
life, 304; wanderings through 
Europe, 305; falls into the 
hands of the Inquisition, 
306; his trial, 307; sentence 
and execution, 307 sg.; his 
philosophical views, 308 sg. 

Buonarroti, Michael Angelo, 
76, 80; work as an architect, 
206 sg.; position as an artist, 
228; founded no school, but 
his influence lasted, 236 

Burchard, master of ceremo- 
nies to Alexander VI.: his ac- 
count of the murder of the 
Duke of Gandia, 71; of the 
amusements of the Pope and 
his children, 73; of the death 
of Alexander, 75 

Buti, Lucrezia, mother of Filip- 
pino Lippi, 223 

Byzantium: its yoke shaken off 
by Rome, 15 


Cabbala, the, Pico della Miran- 
dola’s ardent study of, 164 5g. 

Calabria, republic of, 15 

Calabria, Duke of, afterwards 
Ferdinand I. of Naples, 113, 


INDEX. 


317 


11§; his cruelty and avarice, | Castelnau, Michel de, protector 


115 
Caldora, 115 


of Giordano Bruno in Lon- 
don, 305 


Calixtus III. (Alfonzo Borgia), | Castruccio Castracane, 36 
Pope, 55; his aversion to} Catanei, Vannozza, mistress of 


classical studies, 179 
Cambray, League of, 77 
Cambray, Treaty of (the Paix 

des Dames), 278 sq. 
Campeggi, Cardinal, Bishop of 

Bologna, 280 
Campi family, the, Cremona, 

239 
Campo Santo, Pisa, 209 
Canale, Carlo, 70 
Can Grande della Scala, 41 
Canossa, House of, 20 
Cantort da Piazza; Cantori da 

Banca, 243, 246 
Capitano del Popolo: magistrate 

chosen during conflicts of 

Guelfs and Ghibellines, 31 
Capponi, Niccolé, the Gonfa- 

lonier (Florence), ro4, 146, 

286 
Caracci, the, painters, 237 
Caravaggio, battle of, 45 
Carducci, Francesco, 104 
Carmagnuola, 50 
Carnesecchi: burned by the 

Roman Inquisition, 303 
Carolingian Cycle: its original 

material not congenial to 

Italians, 244 sg.; how it came 

to take hold on popular 

fancy, 245 sg.; Pulci’s treat- 
ment, 247; Boiardo’s, 2d. 
Carpaccio, Vittore, painter, 230 


; Sd. 
eens Archbishop of Tole- 
do: condemned to death by 
the Inquisition, 303 
Carrara, John of 
chancellor of, 127 
Carroccia, the, instituted by 
Archbishop Heribert, 21 
Casal Maggiore, Venetian fleet 
burnt at, 45 


Ravenna 


Atexander VI., 70, 72 
Catena, Vincenzo, painter, 230 
Catholicism, the awakening of, 

by the Reformation, 290 s¢q.; 

gains in strength, 309 
Cellini, Benvenuto: his work, 

218 
Cendrata, Taddea, wife of 

Guarino da Verona, 195 
Certosa of Pavia, the, 40 
Cesare da Sesto, painter, 234 
Cette, Bishop of, poisoned by 

the Borgias, 74 
Charles the Great: crowned 

Emperor at Rome, 16; forms 

a Frankish kingdom in Italy, 

td. 

Charles V., of Spain: his com- 
pact with Clement VII., 278; 
Emperor Elect: his journey 
to Bologna, 279; his recep- 
tion there, 26.; meeting with 
Clement, 281; his coronation, 
281 sgg.; the events that fol- 
lowed, 283 sgq. 

Charles VIII. of France: his 
accession, 106; character,2d. ; 
rejecting Margaret, daughter 
of Emperor Maximilian, he 
marries Anne of Brittany, 
107; how he prepared for the 
invasion of Italy, 26.; mixed 
feelings of Italians at his ap- 
proach, 107 sg.; advance ine 
to Lombardy, 2d.; details of 
his army, 109; the appeals 
made to Charles’s heart, 26.; 
the Medici ejected, 110: his 
entry into Florence, 111}; ac- 
cepts a ransom to qnitit, 112; 
progress to Rome a contin- 
ued triumph, 112 sg.; his 
army in the Eternal City, 


318 INDEX. 


113; entry into Naples, 117; 
league formed against him: 
his retreat to Asti, 118; bat- 
tle of the Taro, 119; dilatory 
return to France, 726.; treaty 
of Vercelli, 74.; the effect of 
his raid upon Italy, 120 sg. 
Chrysoloras, John (brother of 
Manuel), 188 
Chrysoloras, Manuel, Profes- 
sor of Greek in the Univer- 
sity of Florence, 130 
Chrysoloras, Theodora, daugh- 
ter of John, wife of Filelfo, 
189; her death, 190 
Church, the: its old contest 
against literature, 121 
Churches: Duomo, Florence, 
202, 203; Duomo, Milan, 
40; Duomo, Orvieto, 209 ; 
Duomo, Siena, 209, 212; of 
Monte Oliveto, Naples, 270; 
Orsammichele, Florence, 202, 
211; S. Andrea, Mantua, 
203; S. Andrea,  Pistoja, 
209; S. Chiara, Naples, 219; 
S. Clemente, Rome, 220; S. 
Croce, Florence, 202; S. 
Donato, Arezzo, 209; S, 
Francesco, Assisi, 200, 209; 
S. Francesco, Rimini, 203; 
S. Lorenzo, Florence, 207; 
5. Lorenzo, Rome, 203; S. 
Marco, Florence, 92, 102; S. 
Maria della Consolazione, 
Todi, 205; S. Maria delle 
Grazie, Varallo, 235; S. 
Maria del Popolo, Rome, 
235; S. Maria in Via Lata, 
Rome, 66; S. Maria Novella, 
Florence, 211, 218, 225; S. 
Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, 
305, 307; S. Maurizio Mag- 
giore, Milan, 234; S. Minia- 
to, Florence, 199; S. Peter's, 
Rome, 54, 205, 207; S. Pe- 
tronio, Bologna, 212, 281, 
282; S, Spirito, Florence, 


203, 206; S. Trinita, Flor 
ence, 225 

Cimabue, painter, 218 

Cima da Conegliano, painter 
230 

Cinthio, Giraldi: his Hecatom- 
mitht supplied our bestdram. 
atists with hints for plays, 
260 

Cione, Benci di, architect, 211 

Ciriaco of Ancona, 222 

Cities, Italian: remained the 
centres of literature and art, 
289 : 

Civitale, Matteo, sculptor, 215 

Clarence, Duke of (son of Ed- 
ward III.), married Violante, 
daughter of Galeazzo Vis- 
conti, 38 

Classics, the, enthusiasm for, 
kindled by the Renaissance, 
7; the task of the critics 
and philologers, 9; work of 
printers, 9 

Clement II., Pope, 22 

Clement VII. (Medici), Pope; 
weak and vacillating rule, 
83; the Pope friendless, 2d. ; 
the ‘army of Frundsberg’: 
the sack of Rome (1527), 83; 
a prisoner in S. Angelo, 277; 
compact with Charles V. and 
its results (see Charles V.) 

Colleoni, Bartolommeo, the 
statue of, 214 

Colonna, Cardinal, 66 

Columbus: used the compass 
for his voyage to America, I1 

Comedies, Italian: origically 
only translations, 263 

Comines, Philip de, on the 
character of Charles VIII. 
of France, 106 

Commune, the meaning _ of, 
19, 31 

Compagnaccat, young Florentine 
opponents of Savonarola, 
IO1, 102 


INDEX. 


Compagnia della Misericordia, ] Decembrio, 


at Borgo San Sepolcro, 221 

Compagni, Dino: interest of 
his Chronicle apart from the 
doubt thrown upon its au- 
thenticity, 136 

Compass, the, discovery of, 1 

Consiglio del Popolo; C. della 
Parte; C. del Commune, 31 

Constance, Peace of, 24 

Consuls of Italian cities, posi- 
tion of, 26 sq. 

Consuls, Roman: confirmed 
by Greek Emperor, 13 

Copernicus, 11 

Cordegliaghi, painter, 230 

Cornazano, Antonio, author of 
I Proverbi, 259 

Corniole, Giovanni della: his 

- intaglio portrait of Savona- 
rola, 93 

Coronation of Charles V. at 
Bologna, 282 sg. 

Corregio, painter, 236 

Council of Florence (trans- 
ferred from Ferrara), for 
union between Greek and 
Latin Churches, 159 

Counter - Reformation, the 
Catholic: organized by Paul 
IV. and Philip V., 295 

Credenza, the, meaning of, 20, 
31 

Credi, Lorenzo di: a pupil of 
Verocchio, 214 

Cremona: its school of paint- 
ing, 239 

Crime and vice in Italy, 47 

Crivelli, Crivello, painter, 230 


Damasus II., Pope, 22 

Daniele da Volterra, painter, 
236 

Dante: initiated the move- 
ment of the modern intel- 
lect, 122; estimate of his 
prose writings, 134; his ideal 
of a monarchy, 134 s¢. 


319 


Piero Candido: 
his sketch of the habits and 
vices of a tyrant (Filippo 
Maria Visconti), 187 sg. 

De Croce, Giorgio, 70 

Della Crusca, 289 

Della Torre, the family of, 36 

Despots, the: the nature of 
their rule, 33; effect on char- 
acter of the people, 34; how 
it was maintained, 74.; gen- 
eral character of the despots, 
35; the Visconti, 36 sgq.; the 
Scala family, 41; the tyr- 
ranny of Gian Galeazzo Vis- 
conti, 41; its collapse, 42; 
degeneration of despotic 
families, 2b.; career of Fran- 
cesco Sforza, 45 sgq.; tragic 
fate of his successors, 46; 
prevalence of crime and 
vice, 47; influence of the 
Renaissance even on ty- 
rants: Sigismondo Pandolfo 
Malatesta, 48; Frederick, 
Duke of Urbino, 49 

Djem, Prince, brother of Sul 
tan Bajazet: said to have 
been poisoned by Alexander 
VI., 68 

Domenico, Fra, executed with 
Savonarola, 103 

Domenico Veneziano, painter, 
221 

Domestic architecture in Italy, 
200 sq. 

Donatello, sculptor, 213 s¢. 

Doni, Antonfrancesco, novel- 
ist, 259 

Doria, Andrea, 279, 280 

Doria, Cardinal Girolamo, 280 

Dosso Dossi, painter, 239 

Dovizio, Bernardo, author of 
the Colandra, 263 

Drama, Italian: its beginnings, 
261 

Duccio di Buoninsegna, pain- 
ter, 21g 


320 


INDEX. 


EPISTOLOGRAPHY as a branch| Ferdinand the Catholic: the 


of elegant literature, 130 
Erasmus, as a humanist, Io 
Eremitani, the, at Padua, 222 
Este, House of, 20: gayety 

and splendor of their court 


at Ferrara, 86; liberality 
towards scholars and hu- 
manism, 193 

Este, Beatrice, d’, 36 


Este, Ercole d’, Duke of Fer- 
rara: motives for desiring 
French invasion, 107 

Este, Cardinal Ippolito d’: de- 
frayed the expenses of the 
publication of the Orlando 
Furioso, 252 

Este, Isabella d’, 280 

Este, Lionello d’, pupil of 
Guarino da Verona: one of 
the best scholars of his age, 


194 

Eugenius IV., Pope, 56; shares 
in the literary life of Flor- 
ence, 159; causes of his 
flight from Rome, 173 

Europe, state of, in 1530, 285, 
299 

Exarchate, the, 14, 16 

Ezzelino da Romano: vicar of 
Frederick II. in North Italy, 
27; his barbarous cruelties, 
23 5g. 


FALCONETTO, Giovanni Maria, 
architect, 206 

Farnese, Giulia (Za Sella): 
mistress of Alexander VI., 
70; her statue (as Vanity) on 
Paul III.’s monument, 293 

Farnesina, Villa, Rome, 205, 
238 

Feltre, Vittorino da (surname 
Rambaldoni): early career, 
192; a schoolmaster: mod- 
ern character of his mode of 
education, 193; praiseworthy 
life, 24.; died penniless, 7d. 


price of his neutrality 
towards Charles VIII., 107; 
joins the League of Venice 
against him, 118 

Ferdinand II. of Naples (son 
of Alfonso II.): flies from 
Naples at the approach of 
Charles VIII., 116 sg. 

Ferrara: court life at, 86 ; 
ranked among the _ high 
schools of humanism, 193 
S9q- 

Ferrari, Gaudenzio, painter, 234 

Ferrucci, Francesco, 287 

Feudalism, German, rise of ir 
Italy, 17 

Ficino, Marsilio: early study 
of Greek, 161; an earnest 
Christian, 76.; his Platonic 
works, I61 sg. 

Fiesole, Abbey of: foundation 
of its library, 151 

Filelfo, Francesco: birth and 
early career, 188; at Con- 
stantinople, 725.; marries 
Theodora Chrysoloras, 7d. ; 
his vast classical knowledge, 
188 sg.; successive engage- 
ments, Venice, Bologna, 
189; his feuds at Florence, 
189; retires to Siena, 190; 
life at Milan, 24.; honor 
shown him at various courts, 
Ig1; ill success at Rome, 
Ig; death at Florence, 192 

Firenzuola, Agnoio, novelist, 
259 

Florence, vicissitudes of, 60, 
65; the time of Savonarola, 
86 sgg.; ejection of the Me- 
dici, 110; entry of Charles 
VIIL. tir; the City zane 
somed, II2; constitutes it- 
self a republic, 285; siege of 
1530, 286; capitulation, and 
consequent extinction of the 
republic, 288 


Ee 


INDEX, 


Floventine historians, the. 
See Historians. 

Fonte Gaja, Siena, 212 

Fontius, Bartholomzus, 9 

Fornovo, battle of, 118 

Francesco da Carrara, 41 

Francesco da Toledo, Spanish 
confessor of Gregory XIII., 
310 

Francesco di Giorgio, archi- 
tect, 204 

Francia, Francesco (Raibolini), 
painter, 227 

Franciabigio, painter, 238 

Francis I. and the Treaty of 
Cambray, 278 

Franks, the: subdue the Lom- 
bards in Italy, 16; Lom- 
bard provinces formed into 
a Frankish kingdom by 

Charles the Great, 724.; its 
development, 17; supersed- 
ed by suzerainty to the Ger- 
man Otho I., 26. 

Frateschi, nickname of follow- 
ers of Savonarola, 99 

Frederick Barbarossa, Emper- 
or: his war with the Lom- 
bard cities, 24; the burghers 
as a third power between 
him and the Church, 25; out- 
come of their contest with 
him, 26; he establishes the 
office of Podesta, 26 

Frederick II., Emperor: unites 
the Empire and the king- 
dom of the Two Sicilies, 27; 
his warfare with the Church, 
z6.; the cruelties of his rep- 
resentative, Ezzelino da Ro- 
mano, 27 sqq. 

Free-burghs, Italian: their ori- 
gin, 18 sg.; development of 
their form of government, 
1g; details of their constitu- 
tion, 19; influence of Milan 
on their struggles, 21 ; priv- 
ileges granted by Gregory 


321 


VII., 22; rivalry of cities, 
25 
Froben (printer), 9 
Frundsberg, the so-called army 
of, 83 


GAETA, 14 

Gandia, Duke of, son of Alex. 
ander VI., 70; his murder, 
71 sg. 

Garofalo, Benvenuto, painter, 
239 

Genoa: growth into power, 14, 
16 

Gentile da Fabriano, painter, 
223 

German feudalism in Italy, 17 

Ghiberti, Lorenzo di -Cino, 
sculptor, 211 

Ghirlandajo, Domenico, paint- 
er, 225 

Giacomo della Quercia, sculp- 
tor, 211 

Gian Bologna, sculptor, 218 

Giannotti, Donato, historian, 
146 

Giano della Bella, revolution 
of, 136 

Giberti, 
279 

Gioja of Naples, the discover- 
er of the compass, II 

Giorgione, painter, 232 

Giotto (surname Bordone), 
painter: his works and his 
school, 219 

Giovio, Paolo, on the death of 
Alexander VI., 75 

Giuliano da San Gallo, 57 

Giulio Romano: work as an 
architect, 205 ; as a painter, 
235 

Giustiniani, Venetian ambas. 
sador, on the death of Alex- 
ander VI., 75 

Gonzaga, Camilla, 272 

Gonzaga, Elisabetta, Duchess 
of Urbino, 51 


Bishop of Verona, 


322 


INDEX, 


Gonzaga, Cardinal Ercole, 279/ Guicciardini, Francesco. on 


Gonzaga, Marchese Gian Fran- 
cesco (Mantua), 192 

Gonzaga, Marchese Lodovico 
(Mantua), IgI 

Gonzaga, Lucrezia, 257 

Gothic architecture, ill success 
of in Italy, 200; notable 
churches and municipal 
buildings in that style, 2d. 

Gran Consigho, the, meaning 
of, 20, 31 

Grand Duke of Tuscany: title 
granted by Pius V. to Cosi- 
mo de’ Medici, 288 

Greek Empire: its fall gave 
an impulse to the new order, 


Gregory the Great, organiza- 
tien of Roman hierarchy by, 


15 

Gregory VI., Pope, 22 

Gregory VII. (Hildebrand), 
Pope: his contest with the 
Empire, 22 

Gregory XIII. (Ugo Buoncom- 
pagno), Pope: character and 
policy,309 sg.; efforts against 
brigands, 310 

Gritti, Doge Andrea, 217 

Grocin, a pupil of Poliziano, 
168 


Guarini, Battista, author of the 


Paster Fido, 273 

Guarino da Verona: studied 
Greek at Constantinople, 193; 
return to Italy, 2d.; manner 
of life at Ferrara, 194; great 
reputation as a teacher and 
disciplinarian, 2d. 

Gucci (or Duccio), Agostino di, 
sculptor: work in terra cotta, 


215 

Guelfs and Ghibellines: origin 
of the parties, 29; depth of 
their party feeling as shown 
in trivial details, 30 sg.; the 
final issue of their conflicts, 32 


the character of Alexanaer 
VI., 67; on that Pope’s 
death, 75 sg.; description of 
the character of Charles 
VIII. of France, 106; ac- 
count of the early life of 
Guicciardini, 143; his many 
public engagements, 144; 
adherent of the Medici, 74.; 
death, 145; his works, 72d. 
Guido da Siena, painter, 219 
Guise, Duke of, 295 
Gunpowder: revolutionized the 
art of war, II 
Gurk, Cardinal of, 75 


HADRIAN, Cardinal, 79 ; 

Hecatommithi, the, of Giraldi 
Cinthio: their wide reputa- 
tion, 260 

Henry VII. of England: re- 
lations with Charles VIIL, 
107 

Henry VIII.’s divorce, 280, 
285 

Heribert, Archbishop (Milan), 
the protagonist of the epis- 
copal revolution against 
feudalism, 21 

Hildebrand. See GregoryVJ/. 

Fiistorians, the Florentine: the 
interest and value of their 
works, 132; the Chronicle 
written by the three Villani, 
134; their writings compared 
with Dante’s prose works, 
26.; the Chronicle of Dino 
Compagni: its interest apart 
from the question of its 
authenticity, 135 sg.; the his- 
torians of 1494-1537, 137; 
Machiavelli, 137 sgg.; Guic- 
ciardini, 143 sgg.; Nardi, 
Nerli, Giannotti, Varchi, 
Segni, Pitti, 145 sg.; a com- 
parison of the various styles 
of these writers, 146 sg.j 





INDEX. 


323 


value of their works to the| Isabella of Aragon, wife of 


Student, 147 sg. 
Hohenstauffen, the House of, 
warfare of the Popes against, 
27 
Holy Roman Empire, the, 282 
Homer, first printed edition of, 


9 

Humanism, history of, in Mi- 
lan, Mantua, and Ferrara, 
187 sgq. 

Huns, the, 18 

Hutten, Von: on Leo X.’s 
‘financial speculation,’ 79 


IDYLLICc literature, Italian, 268 


3 . 

asin del Carretto, tomb of, at 
Lucca, 212 

I] Lasca (Antonfrancesco Graz- 
zini), writer of Movelle, com- 
edies and poems, 258 s7. 

Il Parmigianino (Francesco 
Mazzolo), painter, 236 

Il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio 
Bazzi, or Razzi), painter, 
238 

Index Expurgatorius, 301 sqq. 

Indulgences, sale of, 47, 80 

Infessura, Stefano, 65 

Innocent VIII. (Giambattista 
Cibo), Pope: his breach of 
oaths made on his election, 
63 sg.; publicly acknowl- 
edges his seven children, 64; 
establishes a bank for the 
sale of pardons, 26.; founda- 
tion of Medicean interest in 
Rome, 65; boys sacrificed to 
attempt to prolong his life, 
tb. 

Inquisition, the, in Rome, 292, 
302 sq.; in Spain, 292 

Iron crown of Lombardy, the, 
281 

Isabella, daughter of King 
John of France, married to 
Gian Galeazzo Visconti, 38 


Gian Galeazzo Sforza, 109 

Italy: the cradle of the Re- 
naissance, 7 sgq.; the begin- 
ning of modern Italian his- 
tory : the Goths, 13; Lom- 
bard conquest: disintegrat- 
ing effect, 14; compact be- 
tween Charles the Great and 
the Pope, 16; southern Italy 
comes under the Papal sway, 
20 sg.; condition of Italian 
States in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, 33 sgg.; changes in the 
condition of its States (1530 
—60), 288 sq. 


JESUITS, the: foundation of, 
292; their work for the Pa- 
pacy, 299 

Jovianus Pontanus: founded 
an Academy at Naples, 185; 
character of his writings, 186 

Jubilee of 1450, 54 

‘Julia, daughter of Claudius,’ 
legend of, 8 

Julius II. (Giuliano cella Ro- 
vere), Pope: as Cardinal op- 
posed the election of Alex- 
ander VI., 66; as Pope, one 
of the greatest figures of the 
Renaissance,76; the Saviour 
of the Papacy and the curse 
of Italy: the Pontefice tert 
bile, 78 

Justinian, 14 


KEPLER: on the death of Gior- 
dano Bruno, 308 


LAGOONS of Venice, 40 

Landino, Cristoforo: teacher 
of Lorenzo de’ Medici, 165; 
devoted himself to scholar- 
ship, 24.; his lectures on 
Petrarch, commentaries on 
Dante, and Camaldolese Dts- 
cusstons, 10, 


334 


Laurentian Library, Florence: 
partly formed from the li- 
braries of S. Marco, of Fie- 
sola, and of Cosimo de’ Med- 
ici, 151 

Leagues: of Pavia and of 
Milan, 23; Italian, 50; of 
Venice, against Charles 
VILLI. 117 

Learning, the Revival of: the 
Church’s_ position in the 
Middle Ages towards litera- 
ture, 121; the classical tradi- 
tion, lost by the Romance 
nations, preserved by the 
Moslems, 122; Dante initi- 
ated the movement of the 
modern intellect, 724.; Pe- 
trarch the apostle of scholar- 
ship, 123; the impetus he 
gave to liberal studies, 124 
sg.; his followers: Boccac- 
cio, 125; his influence on 
vernacular literature, 127; 
John of Ravenna (Malpa- 
ghino), 127 sg.; Luigi Mar- 
sigli, 128 sg.; Coluccio de’ 
Salutati, 129; Gasparino da 
Barzizza, 130; Manuel Chry- 
soloras: his work in intro- 
ducing Greek literature, 130 

Legnano, Imperial forces de- 
feated at, 24 

Lenzuoli (Borgia), Roderigo. 
See Alexander V/, 

Leo the Isaurian, 15 

Leo III., Pope: crowns Charles 
the Great Emperor at Rome, 
16 ; their compact, 24. 

Leo IX., Pope, 22 

Leo X. (de Medici) Pope: the 
epicurian philosopher as Pri- 
mate of Christendom, 78; 
his reckless expenditure and 
the mischief it wrought to the 
City and the Church, 2d. ; 
measures for recoupment, 
79; his sumptuous mode of 


INDEX. 


life, followed by Roman se- 
ciety, 16.; Leo contrasted 
with Julius II., 80; he was 
unconscious of the magni- 
tude of Luther’s movement, 
80 sg.; his sudden death, and 
the difficulty of choosing a 
successor, 81 ; his patronage 
of the drama, 262 

Library of S. Mark, Venice, 
206 

Library of Urbino: its collec- 
tion of Greek and Latin au- 
thors, 49 sg. 

Library of the Vatican, 175, 
179 

Linacre, a pupil of Poliziano, 
168 

Lippi, Fra Filippo and Filippi- 
no, painters, 223 sg. 

Literary society at Florence: 
life at Florence favorable to 
culture, 149; blending of 
politics and intellectual prog- 
ress, 150; zeal for learning 
shown by Cosimo de’ Medici 
16.; collection of MSS., 
coins, etc., 2d.; patronage of 
art, 151; institution of pub- 
lic libraries, 26.; his literary 
coterie, 151 sg.; Niccolo de’ 
Niccoli, 2d.; Lionardo Bruni, 
153; Carlo Aretino, 155; 
Matteo Palmieri, 156; Gian- 
nozzo Manetti, #4.; Ambro- 
gio Traversari, 158; Euge- 
nius IV. (Pope), Empera. 
John Palzologus, Gemistot 
Plethon, 158 sy.; Piero de’ 
Medici (// Gottose), 159; 
literary patronage of Lorenzo 
de’ Medici, 160; his entfoz- 
rage: Ficino, 161; Pico della 
Mirandola, 162; Landino, 
165; Leo Battista Alberti, 
165 sg.; Scala 166; Polizi- 
ano, 167. 

Lombard architecture, 198. 


INDEX, 


Lombards: establish kingdom 
of Pavia, 14; disintegrating 
effect of their conquest, 24. ; 
their princes join the Cath- 
olic communion, 15; obtain 
possession of Ravenna, 15; 


subdued by Charles the 
Great, 16; their kingdom 
ultimately merged in thé 


Empire, 17 

Longinus, Lance of, sent to 
Innocent VIII. by the Sul- 
tan, 68 

Lorenzetti, Ambrogio 
Pietro, painters, 220 

Lotto, Lorenzo, painter, 239 

Louisa of Savoy, 279 

Louis (of Bavaria), Emperor, 
36 

Louis XI. of France, 46, 105 

Louis XII. of France (successor 
of Charles VIII.): alliance 
with Alexander VI., 73; 
with Ferdinand the Catholic 
against Naples, 74; his pet- 
ty intrigues, 120 

Luini, Bernardino, painter, 234 

Luther, I0, 81, sgg., 102 


and 


MACHIAVELLI, Niccolo: his 
birth and ancestry, 137 sg.; 
his official occupations, 138 ; 
plan for an improved military 
system, 139; imprisoned, 
tortured, and released, 7d.; 
the treatise De Principatibus 
(or Principe), offered to Lo- 
renzo the Magnificent, 140 
$g.; the ethics of that work, 
141; its reception in Flor- 
ence, 20.; his lectures in the 
Florentine Academy, 142; 
his views of warfare, 74.; the 
‘storie Florentine, 142 59.; 
his death and character, 143; 
his plays, 265 

Machiavelli, Pietro, son of Nic- 
colo, 143 


325 


Madama, Villa, Rome, 205 

Maine, Count of (1481), 105 

Majano, Benedetto da, archi- 
tect, 204, 215 

Malatesta, Gismondo Pandolfo, 
IgI 

Malatesta, Roberto, brigand, 
310 

Malatesta, Sigismondo Pan- 
dolfo, Lord of Rimini, 48 

Maleguzzi, Daria, mother of 
Ariosto, 250 

Malpaghino, Giovanni (called 
Giovanni da Ravenna), Pe- 
trarch’s secretary, 127 

Mandorlato quarries of Verona 
198 sq. 

Manetti, Giannozzo: his early 
life, 156; Greek, Latin, and 
Hebrew studies, 74.; trans- 
lated the Psalms from He- 
brew, 157; his public offices, 
26,; translated the New Tes- 
tament, 158 

Manfredi, Astone, Lord of Fa- 
enza, murdered by the Bor- 
gias, 74 

Mansueti, painter, 230 

Mantegna, Andrea, 222 

Marches (territorial divisions), 
17 sq. 

Marescotti, the, 73 

Margaret of Austria, 278 sg. 

Mariano da Genezzano, Fra, 
go, 96 

Marignano, fortress of, 42 

Marradi, Gaspare Mariscotti 
da, 243 

Marrano (= apostate Moor), 
108, I15 

Marsigli, Luigi: urged by Pe- 
trarch to write against the 
Averrhoists, 128 sg.; learned 
society founded by him in 
S. Spirito, Florence, 129 

Marsuppini, Carlo. See Arett- 
so, Carlo 

Martini, Simone, painter, 22¢ 


326 


Masaccio, painter, 220 

Masters in painting, the four 
greatest, 228 

Matarazzo, 8 

Maximilian, Emperor: cause 
of his resentment against 
Charles VIII., 107; joins 
the League of Venice against 
him, 117 sg. 

Mechanical inventions which 
aided the work of the Re- 
naissance, II 

Medicean library, the, 151 

Medici, Alessandro de’, de- 
fended by Guicciardini be- 
fore Charles V., 144 sg. 

Medici, Catharine de’, 299 

Medici, Cosimo de’ (Pater 
Patria): acollector of MSS., 
coins and inscriptions, 150; 
institutes public libraries, 
151; his place a centre for 
literary and_ philosophical 
society, 151 sg.; his entou- 
rage of menof letters, 152 sgq. 

Medici, Giovanni de’, 64 

Medici, Giuliano de’, 61 

Medici, Lorenzo de’ (// AZag- 
nifico): type of the pagan 
spirit of the Renaissance, 39g; 
recalls Savonarola to Flor- 
ence, 91; resents the influ- 
ence of the monk, 95 ; con- 
duct towards him, 96; scene 
at his deathbed, 97; sur- 
passed his grandfather 
(Cosimo) in literary patron- 
age, 160; the scholars who 
formed his entourage, 180 sg. 

Medici, Piero de’ successor to 


Lorenzo: surrendered the 
Tuscan fortresses to the 
French, 97, 110; expelled 


from their city by the Flor- 

entines, 2.; in a sort of cap- 

tivity at Venice, 2d, 
Melozzo da Forli, painter, 221 
Melzi, Francesco, painter, 234 


INDEX, 


Middle Ages, the life in, 3, 5 ; 
degeneration of the plastic 
arts, 6; state of scholarship, 
during, 121 

Michelozzo, architect, 204 

Milan, vicissitudes of, 18, 21, 
23, 36, 38, 43, 45; distin- 
guished scholars attracted 
to it, 187 sgq. 

Militia, national, in Florence, 
138 sq. 

Mino da Fiesole (or di Giovan- 
ni), sculptor, 57, 215 sg. 

Mirandola, Giovanni Pico del- 
la: on Savonarola’s oratory, 
94 ; his talents and personal 
attractions, 162; the dignity 
of his life, 162 ; his powerful 
memory, 163; the famous 
goo theses maintained by him 
at Rome, 24.; charged with 
heresy, but pardoned, 164; 
his conception of the unity 
of knowledge, 24.; he ac- 
quired the ommne sczézle of his 
century, 24.;. the exposition 
of his theory interrupted by 
early death, 164 sg. 

Mocenigo, Giovanni, 306 

Molza, Francesco Maria, au- 
thor of the Vinfa Tiburina, 
272; his dissolute career, 
273 

Monte Cavallo, the horses of, 


oe 
Monte Oliveto, Siena, 238 
Montepulciano, 167 
Montesecco,Giambattista,60s¢. 
Montespertoli, the: ancestors 
of Machiavelli, 138 
Montferrat, House of, 20 
Monticello, castle of, 66 
Monza, 281 sg. 
Morone, Cardinal, 297 


Moroni, Giovanni Battista, 
painter, 239 
Municipal buildings of Italy 


201 SQ 


INDEX. 


327 


Muszeus, first printed edition] Nino di Gallura, 36 


of, 196 


NANTIPORTO, 8 

Naples, men of letters at: 
scholars held here a position 
different from both those of 
Florence and those at Rome, 
180; Petrarch and Boccaccio 
favored by Robert of Anjou, 
181; Alfonso of Aragon’s 
patronage of students, 182; 
Antonio Beccadelli, 24.; Lo- 
renzo Valla, 182; Academy 
of Jovianus Pontanus, 185 

Napoleone della Torre, 36 

Nardi, Jacopo, historian,145 sq. 

Narses: invited Lombards into 
Italy, 14 

Nelli, Francesco, 143 

Neri, Italian faction, 136 

Nerli, Filippo, Florentine his- 
torian, 76, 145 sg., 147 

Niccoli, Niccolé de’: invited 
Manuel Chrysoloras to Flor- 
ence, 130; left his collection 
of MSS. for the benefit of 
scholars, 151; high opinion 
entertained of his literary 
judgment, 152; his pesition 
that of literary dictator, 154; 
generosity and devotion to 
the cause of culture, 72d. 

Nicholas II., Pope, 22 

Nicholas V. (Tommaso Paren- 
tucelli), Pope: his early life 
and education, 174; tutor 
to children of Rinaldo degli 
Albizzi and of Palla degli 


Strozzi, 72.; among _ the 
scholars around Cosimo de’ 
Medici, 175; ecclesiastical 


promotion: bishop and car- 
dinal, 24.; elected Pope, 7d.; 
founded the Vatican Library, 
16.; profuse liberality towards 
scholars, 26. (See also pp. 53 


594.) 


ES | 


Nobles, Italian: contests with 
the free-burghs, 19 sgq.; loss 
of authority, 25 

Norman conquests in South 
Italy, 20; influence on archi- 
tecture, 199 

Novella, the: form of literature 
especially favored by the 
Italians, 244; character of 
the Novella, 256; adapted 
for recitation, 75.; distin- 
guished Novelliert, 259 sgq. 


ODOACER: foundation of his 
kingdom, 13 
Oggiono, Marco d’, painter, 


234 

Orange, Prince of (1530), 279, 
286 

Orcagna (Andrea Arcagnuolo 
di Cione), goldsmith, painter, 
poet, architect, 211 

Oriental style of architecture 
on Italian coasts, 199 

Orleans, Duke of, 118, 119 

Orleans, House of: lay claims 
to the Duchy of Milan, 45 

Orsini, Cardinal, 66 

Orsini, Clarice degli, wife of 
Lorenzo de’ Medici, 160 

Orsini, Orsino, 70 

Ostro- Gothic occupation of 
Italy, 13 

Otho I.: crowned Emperor at 
Rome, 17; assumes title of 
King of Italy, 74.; his con- 
cessions to the bishops, 18; 
remodels the country in the 
interest of the German Em- 
pire, 18 

Otranto, descent of Turks on, 
61 


PACCHIA, Girolamo del, paint 
er, 238 

Padua: Ezzelino da Romano’s 
cruelties there, 28 sg. 


328 


Painting: at first employed as 
an aid to religion, 218; pro- 
cess of secularization, 20.; 
Cimabue’s Madonna, ib.; 
Giotto’s work, 219; the Sien- 
ese school, 24,; pioneers of 
Renaissance painting, 220; 
the Paduan school: Squar- 
cione, Mantegna, 221 sg.; 
masters uninfluenced by hu- 
manistic studies, 222 sg.; Lip- 
pi, Botticelli, 223 sg.; Piero 
di Cosimo, Ghirlandajo, 224 
sg.: culmination of Renais- 
sance art, 225 sg.; Perugino, 
Raphael, 226 sg.; Pinturic- 
chio, Francia, Fra Bartolom- 
meo, 227; the four greatest 
masters, 228; the Venetian 
school, 229; Lionardo da 
Vinci and his pupils, 234; 
influence of Michael Angelo 
on artists, 236; manneristic 
imitators of Correggio, 7d.; 
Del Sarto and his followers, 
237 sqg.; Siena, long inactive, 
receives a fresh impulse, 
238; Ferrarese painters, 239; 
Cremona, 724.; a period of 
decadence in art, 240. 


INDEX, 


Palazzo Vernio, Academy, 28g 

Palazzo del Popolo distinguished 
from Palazzo del Commune, 
20 

Palladio, Andrea, architect, 
207 

Palleschi, the Medicean faction, 
146 

Palmieri, Matteo, 156 sg. 

Papacy, the: beginnings of its 
power, 15 sgg.; southern 
Italy comes under its sway, 
20 sg.; condition of the Pa. 
pacy between 1447 and 1527, 
52; paradoxical character of 
the Popes, 53; work of se- 
curing their temporal juris: 
diction begun by Nicholas 
V., 26.; careers and charac- 
ters of various Popes of the 
Renaissance period, 55 sgq¢.; 
after the ending of the schism 
(1547), the Papacy tended to 
become an Italian sovereign- 
ty, 276; methods of the 
ambitious policy of the Ria- 
rios, Della Roveres, Borgias, 
and Medici, 277; Clement 
VII. the only vigorous sur- 
vivor after the havoc culmi- 


Patx des Dames, La, 278 sq. 
Palzologus, John,Emperor,159 


nating in the Sack of Rome, 
74.; his compact with Charles 


Palazzo: Borgia, Rome, 66; 
Corner, Venice, 206; Ducale, 
Venice, 206, 229; Farnese, 
Rome, 207; #Pandolfini, 
Rome, 205; Pienza, 204; 
Pitti, Florence, 203 sg., 232; 
Pubblico, Siena, 201; della 
Ragione, Vicenza, 208; Ric- 
cardi, Florence, 201, 204; 
Rucellai, 204; della Signo- 
ria, Florence, 201; Strozzi, 
Florence, 204; .-del. Te, 
Mantua, 205, 234; Vecchio, 
Florence, 201 ; Vendramini- 
Calergi, 206; Vidoni, Rome, 
205. 


AS ee ee EEE 


V., and its consequences, 
278; the meeting of the 
Pope and the Emperor, 281 ; 
Clement bestows the iron 
crown on Charles at Bo- 
logna, 282 sg.; changes which 
turned to the profit of Rome, 
289; new efforts after self- 
preservation made by the 
Papal hierarchy, 290; rea- 
sons for summoning a Coun. 
cil, 299; gains to the Papacy 
by the decisions at Trent, 301 
Paper, from cotton and from 
rags, the first manufacture 
of. 11 % 


INDEX, 


Parlamento, the, meaning of, 20 

Parliament, the first, in Italy, 
21 

Parma: created a duchy, 289 

Paul II. (Pietro Barbi), Pope : 
his early life, 56; vulgar love 
of show, 56; patronage of 
art, 25.; prosecution of the 
Platonists, 57; death, 58 

Paul III.(Alessandro Farnese), 
Pope: early life and large 
experience, 29259.; measures 
to stem the Reformation, 


294 

Paul IV. (Giovanni Pietro 
Caraffa), Pope: his charac- 
ter, 294; organizes with 
Philip II. the Catholic coun- 
ter-Reformation, 295; en- 
deavor to reform clerical 
abuses, 296 

Pavia, kingdom of, 14 sg.; de- 
velopment under Frankish 
kings, 17 

Pazzi, conspiracy, the, 60 

Pazzi, Francesco de’, 60 

Peace of Constance, 24 

Pentapolis, the, 14, 16 

Perugino, Pietro, 214; 
work, 226 

Peruzzi, Baldassare: work as 
an architect, 206; as a paint- 
er, 239 

Petrarch: the inaugurator of 
the humanistic impulse of 
the 15th century, 123 59¢.; 
a friend of Robert of Anjou, 
181 

Petrucci, Antonio, 190 

Petrucci, Cardinal: his con- 
spiracy against Leo X., 79 

Philip II., successor of Charles 
V.: quarrel and reconciliation 
with Paul IV., 294 sg¢. 

Piacenza: depopulated by the 
Miianese, 44 

Piagnoni, followers of Savona- 

rola. 99, 147 


his 


329 


Piccino, 50 

Piccolomini, Alfonso, leader of 
brigands, 310 

Piero di Cosimo, painter, 224 

Piero della Francesca, painter, 
221 

Pietra serena (stone of the 
Apennines), 199 

Pinturicchio, Bernardo, puint- 
er, 227 

Pippin, King, invited by Ste- 
phen I]. to conquer Italy, 15 

Pisa, vicissitudes of, 14, 16, 41, 
110 

Pisano, Andrea (da Pontadera), 
210 

Pisano, Giovanni (son of Nic- 
cola), 209 

Pisano, Niccola, architect and 
sculptor: from him dates 
the dawn of the esthetical 
Renaissance, 208; his chief 
works, 209 

Pitti, Jacopo, historian, 146 

Pius II. (4#Xneas Sylvius Pic- 
colomini), Pope: contrast 
between his life before and 
after his election to the Pa- 
pacy, 55; grounds for respect- 
ing him as Pope, 55; high 
position among the human- 
ists, 179 

Pius III., Pope, 76 s¢. 

Pius IV. (Giovanni Angelo Me- 
dici), Pope: character, 297 ; 
management of the Council 
of Trent, 298; conciliatory 
policy and prudence gain 
him supporters, 298 sg. 

Pius V. (Michele Ghislieri), 
Pope, character, 301 s9.j 
rigor of his administration, 
302; the Catholic States sup- 
port him, 303; used the in- 
quisition and the Index Ex- 
purgatorius with severity, 
26.; the progress of knowl: 
edge arrested, 304 


33° 
Platina, historian of the Popes, 


~ 
Plato, first printed edition of, g 
Platonic Academy, Florence, 


152 

Piatonists, Italian, prosecution 
of, by Paul II., 57 

Piethon, Gemistos, 151 

Podesta (magistrate): instituted 
by Frederick Barbarossa, 26; 
his position modified during 
the conflicts of Guelfs and 
Ghibellines, 31 

Poggio Florentino (Gian Fran- 
cesco Poggio Bracciolini) : 
birth and early life, 176; in 
the service of the Roman 
Curia, but refused to take 
orders, 16.; he embraced the 
whole range of contem- 
porary studies, 24.; his elo- 
quence and power of invec- 
tive, 177; continued Lio- 
nardo Aretino’s History of 
the Florentine Republic, 
tb. 

Poliziano, Angelo (surname 
Ambrogini) ; his description 
of Pico della Mirandola, 
162 ; Poliziano’s parentage 
and early youth, 167; pre- 
cocity of his genius, 24. ; his 
translation of Part of Homer, 
2b.; his remarkable scholar- 
ship, 24.; he wrote Latin as 
if it were a living language, 
168; success as a professor, 
2b.; his personal appearance, 
#b., his regard for Lorenzo, 
de’ Medici, 169; Latin mon- 
ody on Lorenzo’s death, 24,; 
the gloomy circumstances of 
his own death, 170 

Pomponius Letus, Julius: bas- 
tard son of one of the San- 
severini, 179; confined his 
studies to Latin, 24.; frugal 
life, 180 ; founded an acad- 





INDEX. 


emy for the study of Latin 
antiquities, 2. 
Pontanus ; his idyllic poems, 
271 sq. 
Pontormo, 
238 

Pontremoli, burnt by Charles 
VIII., 118 

Popolo, the, meaning of, Ig sg., 
31 

Porcari, Stefano,conspiracy of, 

against Nicholas V., 53, 57 

Portogallo, Cardinal di, 215 

Portugal,immigration of Span- 
ish Jews into, 62 

Prato, the sack of, 95 

Printing: as an art, 11; check 
of work by the operations of 
the Inquisition, 304 

Priori, magistrates in Italian 
cities, 27, 31 

Pulci, Luigi: his character, 247; 
his Morgante Maggiore, 247 


Jacopo, painter, 


RAMBALDONI, Bruto de’, 192 

Raphael: painted Savonarola 
among the Doctors of the 
Church, 103; his work as an 
architect, 205; position as an 
artist, 228; no inspiration 
descended from him to his 
followers, 235 

Ravenna: seat of Theodoric 
kingdom, 13; did not come 
under Lombard domination, 
14 

Ravenna, Giovanni da. 
Mailpaghino. 

Reformation, the: the correla: 
tive of the Renaissance, Io 

Renaissance, the: the various 
definitions of the term, I; a 
mental evolution, 3; condi: 
tions required for it, 3 sg.; 
signs of its advent, 4; it was 
the liberation of the reason 
from a dungeon, 6; gave 
fresh inspiration in art, 7 4 


See 


INDEX. 


kindled enthusiam for clas- 
sical knowledge, 7; work 
and methods of critics, phi- 
lologers, and painters, 9; 
the Renaissance encouraged 
theological criticism, 10; 
gave fresh impetus to sci- 
ence: mechanical inven- 
tions, 11; Italy the first or- 
ganizer of the modern spirit, 
12; the conditions of the 
Renaissance evolved under 
the rule of despots, 33; it 
reached maturity in an age 
of crime and vice, 47; its 
productive energy displayed 
by the raid of Charles VIII., 
120; its work through litera- 
ture (see Learning, Revival 
of), and through art (see 
Aris) 

René of Anjou, King (1474), 
105 

Rettori, magistrates in Italian 
cities, 27 

Reuchlin, a pupil of Poliziano, 
168 

Riario, Cardinal, 79 

Riario, Girolamo, 59 sq. 

Ripamonti, on the fate of the 
successors of Francesco 
Sforza, 46 

Robbia, Luca della: his work 
as sculptor, 214; invented 
glazed earthenware, 215 

Romanesque architecture, 198 


Sd. 

Reaiantic Epic, the, in Italy, 
245 

Romanino, Girolamo, painter, 
239 

Rome, men of letters at: 
neither in letters nor in art 
had Rome any real life of her 
own, 171; opening for schol- 
ars there, 7d.; her intellect- 
ual stimulus came from 
Florence, 172; Flavio Bion- 


33! 


do’s work in Rome, 173 s@.; 
work of Nicholas V., 175; 
Lorenzo Valla, Piero Can: 
dido Decembrio, 176; Poggio 
Fiorentino, 74.; Cardinal 
Bessarion, 178; the fortunes 
of Roman scholarship varied 
with the tastes of each suc- 
ceeding Pope, 178 sg.; Acad- 
emy of Pomponius Letus, 
179 

Rosselli, Cosimo, painter, 228 

Rossellino, Antonio, sculptor, 
215 

Rossellino, Bernardino, sculp 
tor, 155 

Rosso de’ Rossi, painter, 238 

Rovere, Giuliano della, Car- 


dinal. See /ulius //. 
Rucellai Gardens, Florence, 
142, 147 


Rucellai, Giovanni, tragedian, 
262 

Sacre Rappresentazioni, the, 
261 

Salaino, Andrea, painter, 234 

Salutati, Coluccio de’, 129 

Salvestro, Fra, 103 

Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, 
60 sq. 

Sancia, Donna, daughter of Al- 
fonso of Aragon, 70 

Santa Casa, Loreto, 217 

S.Casciano, Machiavelli’s farm, 

139 
S. Gemignano, Savonarola at, 


go 
S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 
151 
S. Marco Florence, library of, 
151 
S. Miniato, Florence, 140 
S. Peter, Knightly Order of, 79 
S. Peter, Basilica of, 76, 80 
S. Quentin, battle of, 295 
Sanmicheli, Michaele, 206 
Sannazzaro, Jacopo: the first 


332. 


explorer of ‘* Arcadia,”’ 269 ; 
his life, 269 sg.; his Arcadia, 
270 Sq. 

Sansovino, Andrea Contucci 
da, sculptor, 216 

Sansovino, Jacopo, architect, 
216 

Sanudo: on Alexander VI., 75 

Sarto, Andrea del, painter, 237 

Sarzana, Tommaso da (after- 
wards Nicholas V.) 150 

Savonarola: his history not to 
be dissociated from thatof the 
Renaissance, 85; his early 
life at Ferrara, 86 ; religious 
tendency of his studies, 87; 
inclination to a monastic 
life, 14.; joins the Dominican 
order: his account of his 
motives, 88; failure of his 
early preaching, 89; judging 
the classical revival by its 
fruit, he conceives a spiritual 
resurrection for his country, 
zé.; unappreciated by Lo- 
renzo de’ Medici, 74.; his 
success at Brescia: his Apoc- 
alyptic warnings, 91; the 
turning-point of his life, 20.; 
his first sermon at S, Mark’s 
(1490), 92; the main topic of 
prophetic discourses : for the 
wickedness of Italy a judg- 
ment was imminent, 92 sg.; 
his personal appearance, 93; 
his thrilling oratory, 94 ; de- 
scription of his denuncia- 
tions, 95; examples of the 
realizations of his proph- 
ecies, 26.; made Prior of 
San Marco, 96; opposition 
to Lorenzo, 26.; Savonarola 
at Lorenzo’s deathbed, 97; 
his efforts to rouse the spirit 
of the Florentines, 7d.; re- 
constitutes the State after 
the expulsion of the Medici, 
g8: the changed state of the 


INDEX, 


city, 4.; a reaction, 99; Sa: 
vonarola suspended from 
preaching by Alexander VI., 
26.; his fiery denunciations in 
Lent 1496, 24.; his position 
becoming dangerous in Flor- 
ence, 100; deposed by the 
Signory, 101; his letters of 
justification, 726.; letter to 
Alexander VI., 7d.; the chal- 
lenge to ordeal by fire, 102; 
imprisonment and torture, 
26.; his execution, 103; his 
last words, 24.; the honors 
paid to his memory, 103 s¢.; 
estimate of his work, 2d. 

Saxethus, Franciscus, 9 

Scala family: rise into power, 
41 

Scala, Bartolommeo, 166 

Scala de’ Oro, Venice, 217 

Science: impetus given to it 
by the Renaissance, 11 

Sculpture: the handmaid of 
architecture, 208; school of 
Niccola Pisano, 208 sg.; the 
Cathedral of Orvieto, 209; 
Orcagna’s work as a sculp- 
tor, 211; work in bronze, 73.; 
Della Quercia, 24.; Dona- 
tello, 213; Verocchio, 214; 
Luca della Robbia, 214; his 
contemporaries, 215; faults of 
the mid-Renaissance period, 
216; Andrea da Sansovino, 
26.; Bandinelli and Amma: 
nati, 217; Cellini and Gian 
Bologna, 218 

Scuola di S. Marco (or Campo 
di S. Zanipolo), Venice, 214 

Scuola di S. Rocco, Venice, 
206 : 

Sebastian del Piombo. painter. 
236 

Segnatura, the Camera della 


_ 103 
Segni, Bernado, Florentine his 
torian, 146 


INDEX. 


Serfs, the emancipation of, 25 

Sermoneta, Duke of, 70 

Settignano, Desiderio da, 155, 
216 

Sforza, Ascanio, Cardinal, 66, 
IIl4 

Sforza, Francesco: how he ob- 
tained the dukedom of Milan, 
44 5979. 

Sforza, Lodovico (// moro), 
Lord of Mirandola, 100; de- 
termines to get back the 
Duchy of Milan, 107; invites 
the French into Italy, 108; 
poisons his nephew, Gian 
Galeazzo, 109; joins the 
League of Venice against 
Charles, 117; confirmed in 
possession of his duchy by 

‘treaty of Vercelli, 119 

Siena: its school of paintings, 
219; extinction of the repub- 
lic (1557), 288 

Signorelli, Luca, painter, 221 

Signoria, college of the, 27, 31 

Sixtus IV. (Francesco della 
Rovere), Pope: his nepo- 
tism, 59; his public and pri- 
vate infamy, 74.; promotes 
desolating wars,, «43; sanc- 
tions the Pazz: Cvnjuration 
against the Medici, 60; the 
Inquisition founded under 
his auspices, 62; his religious 
obliquity, 63; he opened the 
Vatican Library to the pub- 
lic; 179 

Sixtus V.: development of the 
Papacy in his reign, 311 sg. 

Society, literary: at Florence, 
149 sgg.; at Rome, 17! sgq.; 
at Naples, 180 sgg.; in Milan, 
etc., 187 sgg. 

Soderini, Cardinal, 79 

Soderini, Piero, 139 

Spoleto, duchy of, 16 s¢., 17 

Stephani, the (printers), 9 

Stephen Ll. (Pope): invites 


333 


Pippin to the conquest of 
Italy, 15 

Stephen X., Pope, 22, 

Straparola, Francesco, 260 

Squarcia, Giramo (huntsman to 
Gian Maria Visconti): his 
cruelty, 43 

Squarcione, Francesco, painter, 
235 si, 

Squillace, Duke of, son of Alex- 
ander VI., 70 

Subbiaco, Abbey of, 66 

Swiss mercenaries, 77 


TARO, battle of the, 119 

Tasso, Torquato, 273 sg. 

Tatti Jacopo, sculptor, 217 

Telescope: used by Coper- 
nicus, II 

Tesiras (Portuguese), a pupil 
of Poliziano, 168 

Theatines: institution of the, 
2gI 

Theodoric: effects of exclusion 
of Rome from his conquest, 
13, 16 sg. 

Thiene, Gaetano di, 291 

Tintoretto, 233 

Titian: his relation to the Ve- 
netian school is like that of 
Raphael to the rest of Italy, 


232 

Tragedies, Italian: artificial, 
262 

Traversari, Ambrogio: Manet- 
ti’s master in Greek, 157 sg. 
Trent, Council of, 280, 292, 
296 sg., 300 sg. 

Trissino, Gian Giorgio: his So- 
fonisba the first regular Ital- 
ian tragedy, 261 sg. 

Two Sicilies, Kingdom, 327, 
187 

Tuscan Romansque, 199 


UGOLINO DA SIENA, painter, 
211 
University of Pavia, 40 


334 


Urbino, Duchy of, 49 
Urbino, Frederick, Duke of, 


49 579. 


VALLA, Lorenzo: birth and early 
life, 183; supreme authority 
on Latin style, 24.; attacks 
on the Papacy: the treatise 
on Constantine’s Donation, 
#6.; brought before the In- 
quisition, 184; delivered by 
Alfonso of Aragon, 184; ap- 
pointed to an office in Rome 
by Nicholas V., 185; quarrels 
with Poggio, 2d. 

Vasari, Giorgio, 224 

Varani, the, 73 

Varchi, Benedetto, Florentine 
historian, 141, 146, 147, 243 

Vasona, bishop of, 103 

Vatican, the, rise of, 54, 63, 
175 

Vaucluse, Petrarch at, 124 

Venetian school of painting, 
229 599. 

Venice, vicissitudes of, 14, 16, 
45,77 

Venusti, Marcello, painter, 236 

Vernacular literature, revival 
of: the age of Boccaccio fol- 
lowed by nearly a century of 
Greek and Latin scholarship, 
241; disuse of the vernac- 
ular by scholars, 241 -<g.; 
contempt in which they held 
it, 242 sg.; the work of res- 
toration: popular forms of 
literature, 243 sq.; the public 
interest in romantic tales in- 
spired the poets, 245; their 
endeavor to put antique sub- 
jects into modern dress, 246; 
Pulci’s elimination of classi- 
cal admixture from popular 
romances, 246; Boiardo’s 
methods, 247 sg.; his work 
carried on by Ariosto, 249; 
the Novella a favored form 


INDEX. 


of literature, 255; form and 
object of Vovelle, 256; dis- 
tinguished Novelliert, 257 
sq:; the Drama as a work 
of studied art, 261; Italian 
tragedy of artificial origin, 
262; comedies were origi- 
nally translations, 263; Arios- 
to’s plays, 264; the Italian of 
Pietro Aretino, 266; play- 
wrights prolific,but not origi- 
nal, 267; the reversion from 
the Catholic to a new ideal 
of life, 267 sg.; la voluttd 
tdtllica, 268; Arcadian ro- 
mance, 269; bucolic idyls, 
271; culmination of pas- 
toral drama: Tasso and 
Guarini, 273 sg.; the classic 
model, once thought essen- 
tial, discarded for a modern 
form, 274 sq. 

Verocchio, Andrea, goldsmith, 
painter, and worker in 
bronze, 214 

Vespasiano da Bisticci, 155, 
177; his Lives of Lllustrious 
Men, 196; last of medieval 
scribes, and first of modern 
booksellers, 24.; knowledge 
of books and of scholars, 24, 

Victor II., Pope, 22 

Villani, Giovanni, his 
Chronicle, 138 sq. 

Vinci, Lionardo da: a pupil of 
Verocchio, 214; his position 
as an artist, 228, 231; left 
but little finished work, but 
his spirit continued to live in 
Lombardy, 234 

Virgil, first printed edition 
of, 9 

Virginio, Captain - General of 
Aragonese army, 113 

Visconti, House of, 28, 36, 42 

Visconti, Azzo, 36 

Visconti, Bernabo, 38, 39 

Visconti, Catherine, 42 


125; 


INDEX, 


Visconti, Filippo Maria, 43 sgq. 
Visconti, Galeazzo, son of Mat- 
teo, 36; grandsonof Matteo, 


37 

Visconti, Gian Galeazzo: mare 
ried to Isabella of France, 
38; murders his uncle (Ber- 
nabo),and becomes sole Lord 
of the Visconti heirship, 39; 
his character and_ public 
works, 39 sg.; employment 
of condottieri 40; schemes 
against the Scala dynasty, 
41; his death, 42; collapse of 
his tyranny, 42 

Visconti, Gian Maria, 43 sg. 

Visconti, Giovanni, Archbishop, 
37 


335 


Visconti, Lucchino, 37 
Visconti, Marco, 36 
A aay Matteo (/7 Grande), 
Visconti, Otho, Archbishop, 
Visconti, Valentina, 45 
Visconti, Violante, 38 
Vitelleschi, Cardinal, 183 
Vitelli, Alessandro, 288 
Vitelli, the, strangled by Cesare 
Borgia, 73 
Vivarini, the, painters, 230 


ZANE, Paolo, 193 
Zanetti, Guido, 303 
Zecca, the, Venice, 217 
Zeno, Greek Emperor, 13 





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